Sharing dump devices between different versions of Linux

Do not share dump devices between Linux® installations with different major releases.

For example, do not share dump devices between SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.

Always use the zgetdump command and the crash utility that are delivered with your latest version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The latest crash utility can process dumps that are created from Linux instances of the same or in earlier versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

The latest zgetdump command can process dumps that are created with the zipl (s390-tools package) version in the same or in earlier versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

As of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3, zipl can prepare disks for dumps of SMT-enabled Linux instances. You can use a dump disk that is prepared with an SMT-enabled zipl version for both Linux instances with and without SMT enablement.