Technical data

System Dump Analyzer
COPY
COPY
Copies the contents of the dump file to another file.
Format
COPY output-filespec
Parameter
output-filespec
Name of the device, directory, and file to which SDA copies the dump file. The
default file specification is:
SYS$DISK:[default-dir]filename.DMP
SYS$DISK and [default-dir] represent the disk and directory specified in your
last SET DEFAULT command. You must supply at least the file name.
Description
Each time the system fails, it copies the contents of physical memory and the
hardware context of the current process (as directed by the DUMPSTYLE
parameter) into the file SYS$SYSTEM:SYSDUMP.DMP (or the paging file),
overwriting its current contents. If you do not save this crash dump elsewhere, it
will be overwritten the next time the system fails.
The COPY command allows you to preserve a crash dump by copying its contents
to another file. It is generally useful to invoke SDA during system initialization
(from within SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM) to execute the COPY
command. This ensures that a copy of the dump file is made each time the
system fails.
The COPY command does not affect the contents of
SYS$SYSTEM:SYSDUMP.DMP.
If you are using the paging file (SYS$SYSTEM:PAGEFILE.SYS) as the dump file
instead of SYSDUMP.DMP, you can use the COPY command to explicitly release
the blocks of the paging file that contain the dump, thus making them available
for paging. Although the copy operation succeeds nonetheless, the release
operation requires that your process have change-mode-to-kernel (CMKRNL)
privilege. Once the dump pages have been released from the paging file, the
dump information in those pages might be lost. You need to analyze the copy of
the dump created by the COPY command.
Example
SDA> COPY SYS$CRASH:SAVEDUMP
The COPY command copies the dump file into the file
SYS$CRASH:SAVEDUMP.DMP.
SDA–46