Specifications

Debugging and Testing Tools
9.4 System Dump Analyzer
You can locate the error using SDA commands that allow you to view the
following pieces of information:
• The location and contents of the four process stacks
VAX
• On a VAX computer, the location and contents of the systemwide interrupt
stack♦
• The active processes and the values of the parameters used in swapping and
scheduling these processes
• The software and hardware context of any process
• The value of a symbol and the contents of the location to which the symbol
points
• A formatted list of a block of memory
• The list of system page table entries
• The lookaside lists, the nonpaged dynamic storage pool, and the paged
dynamic storage pool
• All locks in the system
• The names of the RMS data structures
• All data structures associated with a device
• The VMScluster or the system communications services cluster
• The active connections between systems communication services processes
• The dump file header
• The response identifications
The SDA commands also allow you to switch processes, direct output to a log
file or terminal, scan memory locations, assign a value to a symbol, read global
symbols to add them to the SDA symbol table, and repeat the execution of the
last command.
For more information about the System Dump Analyzer on AXP systems, see the
OpenVMS AXP System Dump Analyzer Utility Manual. For more information
about the System Dump Analyzer on VAX systems, see the OpenVMS VAX System
Dump Analyzer Utility Manual.
9.5 Crash Log Utility Extractor
The Crash Log Utility Extractor (CLUE) is a tool for recording a history of
crash dumps and key parameters for each crash dump and for extracting and
summarizing key information from each crash dump. Unlike crash dumps, which
are overwritten with each system crash and are available only for the most recent
crash, the crash history file on OpenVMS VAX and the summary crash history
file (with a separate listing file for each crash) on OpenVMS AXP, are permanent
records of system crashes.
By examining the key parameters of a crash, you can identify and resolve the
issues that caused it.
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