Installation guide

problem that caused the crash, particularly if the crash was due to a
hardware error.
The savecore command saves the binary event buffer in the
/usr/adm/crash/binlogdumpfile file by default. You can change
the location to which savecore writes the binary event buffer by
modifying the dumpfile entry in the /etc/binlog.conf file. If you
remove the dumpfile entry from the /etc/binlog.conf file,
savecore does not save the binary event buffer.
Later in the reboot process the binlogd daemon starts up, reads the
contents of the /usr/adm/crash/binlogdumpfile file, and moves
those contents into the /usr/adm/binary.errlog file, as specified in
the /etc/binlog.conf file. The binlogd daemon then deletes the
binlogdumpfile file. For more information about how binary error
logging is performed, see the binlogd
(8) reference page.
13.6.3.3 Writing the Dump to Swap Space
When the system creates a crash dump, it writes the dump to the swap
partitions. The system uses the swap partitions because the information
stored in those partitions has meaning only for a running system. Once the
system crashes, the information is useless and can be safely overwritten.
Before the system writes a crash dump, it determines how the dump fits
into the swap partitions, which are defined in the /etc/fstab file. For
example, the following fragment of the /etc/fstab entry shows three
swap partitions available:
/dev/rz1b swap1 ufs sw 0 2
/dev/rz3h swap2 ufs sw 0 2
/dev/rz4b swap3 ufs sw 0 2
You use the swapon command to modify available swap space.
The following list describes how the system determines where to write the
crash dump:
1. If the crash dump fits in the primary swap partition it will be dumped
to /dev/rz1b. The system writes the dump as far toward the end of
the partition as possible, leaving the beginning of the partition
available for boot-time swapping.
2. If the crash dump is too large for the primary swap partition, but fits
the secondary and/or tertiary swap space, the system writes the crash
dump to the other swap partitions, /dev/rz3h and /dev/rz4b
3. If the crash dump is too large for all the available swap partitions, the
system writes the crash dump to the swap partitions until those
Administering Events and Errors 13–19