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Conference turris::digital_unix

Title:DIGITAL UNIX(FORMERLY KNOWN AS DEC OSF/1)
Notice:Welcome to the Digital UNIX Conference
Moderator:SMURF::DENHAM
Created:Thu Mar 16 1995
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:10068
Total number of notes:35879

10002.0. "DUMP: no primary swap" by BPSOF::TELEKI (Laszlo Teleki) Fri May 30 1997 10:26

One of our customers' A1000 crashes regularly but cannot create dump. The error
message after the panic is:

DUMP: problem with primary swap dev 0x0, status 19
DUMP: No primary swap, no explicit dumpdev
      Nowhere to put header, giving up

Configuration:

A1000, 128MB memory
D. UNIX 3.2g, no patches
OSMS v1.5a
SRM 3.1, OSFPAL 1.46 (5.5 console fw from CD 3.6)
The system disk, rz1, is on the embedded SCSI controller.
swap1 on rz1b, size: 200704MB
swap2 on rz2b, size: 162605MB
/ on rz1a, UFS
/usr on rz1g, UFS

Everything seems to be good in rc.config, (dbx) partial_dump 1. Fw had been
upgraded and ECU been run before UNIX installation. The crash occurs during
normal activity not at boot time.

Any hint, suggestion, help would be highly appreciated. The customer has problem
with OSMS, which is under escalation, and the crash dump should be produced.

Regards,

Laszlo
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name		DateLines
10002.1need addl infoRHETT::LACORTIFri May 30 1997 12:1710
    please send the following info..
    
    swapon -s
    the /etc/fstab
    ls -l /sbin/swapdefault
    
    the pagefile info from rc.config
    
    thanks
10002.2BPSOF::TELEKILaszlo TelekiMon Jun 02 1997 05:4457
# swapon -s
Swap partition /dev/rz1b (default swap):
    Allocated space:        25088 pages (196MB)
    In-use space:            2434 pages (  9%)
    Free space:             22654 pages ( 90%)


Swap partition /dev/rz0b:
    Allocated space:        20325 pages (158MB)
    In-use space:            2347 pages ( 11%)
    Free space:             17978 pages ( 88%)

                                                                                 
Total swap allocation:
    Allocated space:        45413 pages (354MB)
    Reserved space:          6429 pages ( 14%)
    In-use space:            4781 pages ( 10%)
    Available space:        38984 pages ( 85%)


# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/rz1a       /       ufs rw 1 1
/proc   /proc   procfs rw 0 0
/dev/rz1g       /usr    ufs rw 1 2
/dev/rz1b       swap1   ufs sw 0 2
/dev/rz0b       swap2   ufs sw 0 2
.
.
.


# ls -l /sbin/swapdefault

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     system        11 May  10 11:34 /sbin/swapdefault ->
../dev/rz1b


# cat /etc/rc.config
.
.
.
PAGERAW="1"
PAGEFILE="/dev/rz1b"
PARTITION="rz1b"
PARTITIONTYPE="RZ28M"
PAGEMINSZ=0
PAGEMAXSZ=0
.
.
.

...and the console variable dump_dev is empty. (BTW the machine crashed again
this morning without crash dump.)

Thank you and regards,

Laszlo
10002.3some things to tryRHETT::LACORTIWed Jun 04 1997 10:017
    for one, I would  put the 3.2g patch kit on the system.
    
    second, when you can I would try to force a crash. I.e. hit the
    halt button and then type "crash" at the >>>. Just to see if it
    is consistant
10002.4BPSOF::TELEKILaszlo TelekiThu Jun 05 1997 05:1222
Thank you for your answer.

The problem seems to be solved (hopefully...).

I upgraded the firmware to SRM 4.8-65 from the fw CD 3.9. The system
consistently crashed when X started (perhaps there is some patch for it...) but
dump has been created (!!!) in every case. Then I downgraded back to SRM 3.1-2
(fw CD 3.6), ran ECU 1.9. I crashed the system (patched the tape driver of the
running kernel with a JMP r31,(r31) -> kernel memory fault) several times. Dump
has been created on each occasion.

There are only two questions left open for me:

1. Can I expect from now that all kind of crashes will create dump? (I think the
answer is yes)

2. How does the console firmware influence the creation of a dump? (What
parameters are passed regarding dump, etc...?)

Regards,

Laszlo