savecrash(1M)

dirname The name of the existing directory in which to store the crash dump; the default is /var/adm/crash.

Mark the dump in the dump device as saved, without performing any other action. The -c option is useful for manually inhibiting dump actions called by /sbin/init.d/savecrash.

Run savecrash in the foreground only. By default, savecrash runs in the background when the primary paging device does not contain an unsaved portion of the crash image. Turning this option on increases system boot-up time, but guarantees that the dump has been saved when control returns to the caller.

Logs the panic information to /etc/shutdownlog as described above, but does not actually save the dump. The dump is marked as saved so that future invocations of savecrash do not create duplicate log entries.

Only preserves swap-endangered dump device contents into crash image files. Swap-endangered dump devices are those devices that are also configured as swap devices by the system. If all dump devices are configured as swap devices, the entire dump will be preserved in the crash directory. If no swap devices are used as dump devices (dedicated dump devices), only the INDEX file and kernel modules will be copied into the crash directory.

Resaves a dump that a previous invocation of savecrash has marked as already saved. This is useful if the first invocation did ran out of space, and enough space has since been freed to try again.

Enables additional progress messages and diagnostics.

savecrash will compress all physical memory image files and kernel module files in the dump directory. This option is ignored if the dump image on the dump device is already compressed. See crashconf(2). In this case, a warning message will be printed.

savecrash will not compress any files in the dump directory.

If neither -z nor -Z is specified and the amount of free disk space is less than the total dump size, savecrash will compress the image files.

dumpdevice is the name of the device containing the header of the raw crash image. The console messages from the time of the panic will identify the major and minor numbers of this device. This option, in combination with -O, can be used to tell savecrash where to find the dump in the rare instances that savecrash doesn't know where to look.

offset is the offset in kBytes, relative to the beginning of the device specified with -D above, of the header of the raw crash image. The console messages from the time of the panic will identify this offset. This option, in combination with -D, can be used to tell savecrash where to find the dump in the rare instances that savecrash doesn't know where to look.

sysfile is the name of a file containing the image of the system that produced the core dump (that is, the system running when the crash occurred). If this option is not specified, savecrash gets the file name from the dump itself. If the file containing the image of the system that caused the crash has changed, use this option to specify the new file name.

minfree is the amount of free space (in kBytes) that must be available for ordinary user files in the file system into which the dump will be saved, in addition to space reserved for the superuser. If necessary, only part of the dump will be saved to achieve this requirement. savecrash calculates the amount of disk space available when it starts saving the dump. Any space used by other processes while dump is being saved is not taken into account.

minfree may be specified in bytes (b), kilobytes (k), megabytes (m), or gigabytes (g). The default minfree value is zero, and the default unit is kilobytes.

chunksize is the size (default kBytes) of a single physical memory image file before compression. The kByte value must be a multiple of page size (divisible by 4) and between 64 and 1048576. chunksize may be specified in units of bytes (b), kilobytes (k), megabytes (m), or gigabytes (g). Larger numbers increase compression efficiency at the expense of both savecrash time and debugging time. If -s is not specified, a default is chosen based on the physical memory size and the amount of available file system space. If the dump image on the dump device is compressed, then the chunksize specification is only used as a size limit for the images copied into the file system. See crashconf(2). If the size specified is smaller than the chunk size used for compression while dumping, then a warning message will be printed and the compression chunk size used by the dump will be used to create the file system images.

tapedevice is the tape device where the crash dump will be written. Crash dumps that are written to tape are written using a tar format. The crash dump tape can be read using tar(1).

When the -t option is specified, the -p option is not allowed and the whole dump is always preserved. In addition, -c and -l, are not allowed and -m is ignored. Also, when -t is specified, savecrash will not perform any compression.

When dirname is specified with the -t option, dirname is the name of the existing directory where the INDEX file is created; the default directory is /tmp. The INDEX file is the first file that is written out to the dump tape. This file is written a second time once all the dump files have been written. The first copy of the file only contains crash dump header information and its filename on tape is tmpindex. It does not contain information for the module and image files.

When writing to tape, the tape device must be online otherwise the command will fail with an error. Additionally, when savecrash reaches end-of-tape, it will prompt the user for the next tape. Any tape errors encountered will result in a generic tape error.

Defines the interaction between savecrash and swapon. opt can be one of the following values:

For compatibility with earlier savecore syntax, the values of 0, 1 and 2 can be used in place of NOSWAP, SWAPEACH, and SWAPEND, respectively. This usage is obsolescent.