Invoking the kdb command

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This topic describes how to configure a processor for system dumps, obtain and verify a system dump, and run the kdb command.

To analyze a running system, the kdb command is simply invoked from the UNIX shell prompt without any command line arguments.

Note: Because the kdb command makes use of the /dev/pmem special file when analyzing a running system, only the root user can invoke the command in this manner.

A side effect of analyzing the running system with the kdb command is that the currently running process as displayed with the p * subcommand, often appears to be the kdb command itself. This occurs because the kdb command can only read the /dev/pmem special file when it is the current process on one of the processors in the system.

When you are analyzing a system dump file, the kdb command must be started with command line arguments that specify the location of the dump files and the kernel files as shown in the following example:

# kdb /var/adm/ras/vmcore.0 /unix

The kernel file is used by the kdb command to resolve symbol names from the dump file. It is imperative that the kernel file specified on the command line is the kernel file that was running at the time the system dump was created.

For more information about creating system dumps, see System Dump Facility in Kernel Extensions and Device Support Programming Concepts.

For more information about invoking the KDB kernel debugger, see Invoking the KDB kernel debugger.