Compressed Dump

Compressed Dump White Paper, Version 1.3
page 18
savecrash relies on the expectation that device numbers have the same meaning
(point to the same devices) at the time the system dumps and at the time the dump
is saved. If, after a crash, the system was booted from a different boot device in
order to run savecrash, it is possible that this expectation will not be met. If so,
savecrash may save an incomplete or incorrect dump or may fail to save a dump at
all. Such cases cannot be reliably detected, so there may be no warning or error
message.
If savecrash encounters an error while running in the background (such as running
out of space), it will not be easily detectable by the caller. If the caller must ensure
that the savecrash operation was successful, for example before writing to a dump
device, the caller should specify -f to force savecrash to run in the foreground, and
should then examine the exit status of the savecrash process when it finishes.
AUTHOR
savecrash was developed by HP and the University of California, Berkeley.
FILES
/etc/shutdownlog shutdown log
/etc/rc.config.d/savecrash savecrash startup configuration file
/sbin/init.d/savecrash savecrash startup file
dirname/bounds crash dump number
/stand/crashconfig/vmunix default kernel image saved by savecrash
SEE ALSO
adb(1), crashutil(1M), crashconf(1M), swapon(1M), tar(1).