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.\" $OpenBSD: crash.8,v 1.4 2000/03/22 03:05:51 aaron Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
.\" must display the following acknowledgement:
.\" This product includes software developed by the University of
.\" California, Berkeley and its contributors.
.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
.\" without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\"
.\" from: @(#)crash.8 6.5 (Berkeley) 4/20/91
.\"
.Dd February 23, 2000
.Dt CRASH 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm crash
.Nd system failure and diagnosis
.Sh DESCRIPTION
This section explains what happens when the system crashes
and (very briefly) how to analyze crash dumps.
.Pp
When the system crashes voluntarily it prints a message of the form
.Pp
.Bd -literal
panic: why i gave up the ghost
.Ed
.Pp
on the console and enters the kernel debugger,
.Xr ddb 4 .
If the debugger command
.Ic boot dump
is entered, or if the debugger was not compiled into the kernel, or
the debugger was disabled with
.Xr sysctl 8 ,
then the system dumps the contents of physical memory
onto a mass storage peripheral device.
The particular device used is determined by the
.Sq dumps on
directive in the
.Xr config 8
file used to build the kernel.
.Pp
After the dump has been written, the system then
invokes the automatic reboot procedure as
described in
.Xr reboot 8 .
If auto-reboot is disabled (in a machine dependent way) the system
will simply halt at this point.
.Pp
Upon rebooting, and
unless some unexpected inconsistency is encountered in the state
of the file systems due to hardware or software failure, the system
will copy the previously written dump into
.Pa /var/crash
using
.Xr savecore 8 ,
before resuming multi-user operations.
.Ss Causes of system failure
The system has a large number of internal consistency checks; if one
of these fails, then it will panic with a very short message indicating
which one failed.
In many instances, this will be the name of the routine which detected
the error, or a two-word description of the inconsistency.
A full understanding of most panic messages requires perusal of the
source code for the system.
.Pp
The most common cause of system failures is hardware failure
.Pq e.g. bad memory
which
can reflect itself in different ways. Here are the messages which
are most likely, with some hints as to causes.
Left unstated in all cases is the possibility that a hardware or software
error produced the message in some unexpected way.
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It no init
This panic message indicates filesystem problems, and reboots are likely
to be futile. Late in the bootstrap procedure, the system was unable to
locate and execute the initialization process,
.Xr init 8 .
The root filesystem is incorrect or has been corrupted, or the mode
or type of /sbin/init forbids execution.
.It timeout table overflow
.ns
This really shouldn't be a panic, but until the data structure
involved is made to be extensible, running out of entries causes a crash.
If this happens, make the timeout table bigger.
.It trap type %d, code=%x, pc=%x
A unexpected trap has occurred within the system; the trap types are
machine dependent and can be found listed in
.Pa /sys/arch/ARCH/include/trap.h .
.Pp
The code is the referenced address, and the pc is the program counter at the
time of the fault is printed.
Hardware flakiness will sometimes generate this panic, but if the cause
is a kernel bug,
the kernel debugger
.Xr ddb 4
can be used to locate the instruction and subroutine inside the kernel
corresponding
to the PC value.
If that is insufficient to suggest the nature of the problem,
more detailed examination of the system status at the time of the trap
usually can produce an explanation.
.It init died
The system initialization process has exited. This is bad news, as no new
users will then be able to log in. Rebooting is the only fix, so the
system just does it right away.
.It out of mbufs: map full
The network has exhausted its private page map for network buffers.
This usually indicates that buffers are being lost, and rather than
allow the system to slowly degrade, it reboots immediately.
The map may be made larger if necessary.
.El
.Pp
That completes the list of panic types you are likely to see.
.Ss Analyzing a dump
When the system crashes it writes (or at least attempts to write)
an image of memory, including the kernel image, onto the dump device.
On reboot, the kernel image and memory image are separated and preserved in
the directory
.Pa /var/crash .
.Pp
To analyze the kernel and memory images preserved as
.Pa bsd.0
and
.Pa bsd.0.core ,
you should run
.Xr gdb 1 ,
loading in the images with the following commands:
.Pp
.Bd -literal
file /var/crash/bsd.0
target kcore /var/crash/bsd.0.core
.Ed
.Pp
After this, you can use the
.Ic where
command to show trace of procedure calls that led to the crash.
.Pp
For custom-built kernels, it is helpful if you had previously
configured your kernel to include debugging symbols with
.Sq makeoptions DEBUG=-ggdb
.Pq see Xr options 4
(though you will not be able to boot an unstripped kernel since it uses too
much memory.)
In this case, you should use
.Pa bsd.gdb
instead of
.Pa bsd.0 ,
thus allowing
.Xr gdb 1
to show symbolic names for addresses and line numbers from the source.
.Pp
If you are sure you have found a reproducible software bug in the kernel,
and need help in further diagnosis, or already have a fix, use
.Xr sendbug 1
to send the developers a detailed description including the entire session
from
.Xr gdb 1 .
.Sh "SEE ALSO"
.Xr gdb 1 ,
.Xr ddb 4 ,
.Xr reboot 8 ,
.Xr savecore 8 ,
.Xr sendbug 1
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