Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!brachiosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu!cml From: cml@brachiosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Christopher Lott) Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid Subject: Re: how to force a dump? Message-ID: <45696@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 28 Apr 89 01:12:39 GMT References: <8904272154.AA00226@era.ucar.edu.UCAR.EDU> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: Christopher Lott Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science Lines: 61 In article <8904272154.AA00226@era.ucar.edu.UCAR.EDU> era@NIWOT.UCAR.EDU writes: >Question: is there some way, from one of the COS panels, to coerce >OSx into dropping a core file? Take this for what it's worth. These are some very, _very_ old instructions I once got from RTOC which were supposed to cause a pyramid machine (hung or otherwise) to panic. Takes some diddling, and be warned that it *never* worked for me. If this is hopelessly obsolete and wrong, would someone at Pyramid (hi, carl g?) please correct me? How to Force a Panic 1. If the system is hung, or you have a reason to cause a crash go to COS frame B and halt it by pushing the Z-key. 2. The system will stop. Make a note of the Program Counter in the system status line at the bottom of the screen. It will look like: FFxxxxxx 3. Alter memory word location following that address. If pc = FF150808 then change location FF15080C. (ie, add 0x4.) Store a 31000001 there. This will be the next instruction executed when the machine is restarted. Type 'M' to modify memory - you will see a display something like this: FF150800: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 address ^800 ^804 ^808 ^80C The pyramid has long words (a 4 word boundary). 4. Next, alter GR0. Store the hex number 0000 0001 there. This is General Register 0 - displayed in frame B. Use command 'A' to modify registers. 5. Restart the CPU with the Z-key in frame B. The two new instructions force the computer to attempt exe- cution of a word instruction on a byte boundary. This forces a trap, and if savecore enabled (in /etc/rc), core will dump. All the contents of memory will be written to the swap device. 6. Hit 0, and watch to see that this happens. If the panic was caused by a disk error, the core-write may fail also. 7. Reboot. If savecore is enabled, the contents of the swap device will be copied once again into the directory specified; most usually, this is /usr/crash, but the custo- mers move it around. There must be enough free space in the file system to hold it. It will be as large as the memory copied, and in the case of repeated failures there will al- ready be other dumps stored there. my note: attempted 870817 to no avail. chris... -=- cml@cis.ohio-state.edu Computer Science Dept, OSU 614-292-1826 or: ...!{att,pyramid,killer}!osu-cis!cml