In the past few months, I have had a couple of Solaris hosts go haywire (e.g., zones hanging, network interfaces no longer responding, etc.). When problems similar to these occur, I like to generate a core file from the running kernel to help the Sun support organization isolate the problem. There are two ways that I am aware of to grab a core file from a borked system. The first method utilizes the reboot utilities “-d” option:
$ reboot -d
This will reboot the host, and will generate a core file as part of the reboot. The second method uses the savecore utility to generate a core file from a running system. To use savecore, you will need to first configure a dedicated dump device (since swap is most likely in use on a production host, you can’t use it). Once the dedicated dump device is configured, the savecore utility can be run with the “-L” option:
$ savecore -Lv
It’s all about a bug free Solaris / Nevada, and these are two methods to help us get there.