Special Disk Operations - Solaris 9 System Administrator - page 253

Table 11.5 The savecore Command-Line Arguments

Argument Purpose

-d Disregards dump header valid flag. This forces savecore to save the

crash dump even if the dump header valid flag indicates the crash
dump has already been saved.

directory Saves crash dump in specified directory instead of the default or the

dumpadm -configured savecore directory.

-f dump-device Attempts to save crash dump from specified dump-device instead

of the default or the dumpadm- configured dump device.

-L Saves crash dump of live (active) system. Used to take a snapshot

of the executing operating system.

-v Displays verbose error messages.

In the event that savecore cannot save a crash dump because of the minimum free
space threshold (or because savecore procedure was disabled), the savecore com-
mand can be executed after the system reboots to save the crash dump. If this
manual procedure is used due to the free space threshold, be certain to specify an
alternative save directory.

Summary
Swap space is used to increase the apparent size of memory by using disk
space. A swap partition is created when the system is installed. If more swap
space is needed, swap files can be created and added into the system config-
uration.

Core files are copies of memory being used by programs that malfunction.
These are used to debug software. Core file management involves
enabling/disabling core files globally or on a per-process basis along with
selecting a directory and naming conventions for core files.

Crash dumps are the core files for the operating system. When the system
boots, the crash dump can be saved in a user-accessible area so that it can be
analyzed.