To dump 31- and 64-bit SLES 8 & 9's, I've installed the 64-bit SLES 9 zipl dasd dump utility on a 3390-mod9 that I can CP ATTACH to whichever Linux guest needs to be dumped. The mod9 is dasdfmt-ed and has 2 partitions: partition #1 has the reusable, IPL-able, zipl dasd dump utility installed on it; this makes the mod9 bootable, you have to size partition #1 a bit larger than the memory size of the largest Linux guest you ever want to dump. Partition #2 (the rest of the mod9) is an ext3 filesystem; purpose is to hold the gzipped, formatted form of the raw dump found in partition #1. After getting the raw dump, process it into a formatted compressed file that can be downloaded and sent to your vendor for analysis: attach the mod9 to any SLES 9 64-bit linux that has zgetdump, mount partition #2 at /mnt, process the dump with zgetdump and pipe its output thru gzip to get a formatted, compressed dump file: zgetdump /dev/dasd?1 | gzip -c > /mnt/dump-my-server.gz You don't need a dedicated partition #2 if you know you'll have enough disk freespace on the server that runs zgetdump.
I've since read somewhere that CP VMDUMP's can be converted to the same format produced by zgetdump but don't remember the details or where. This might be convenient if you set aside enough CP spool space. -------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail, including any attachments, may be confidential, privileged or otherwise legally protected. It is intended only for the addressee. If you received this e-mail in error or from someone who was not authorized to send it to you, do not disseminate, copy or otherwise use this e-mail or its attachments. Please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete the e-mail from your system. -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Peter 1 Oberparleiter Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 5:04 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Dumping a LIN-z System Tom Shilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 27.04.2006 18:40:25: > It looks to me that taking a dump of a LIN-z system is a manual process. > You either manually IPL a disk, a tape, or you do the VMDUMP command. The > automatic dumping after an oops or kernel panic that is available on LINTEL > is not available on LIN-z. True? Assuming that you are referring to the kdump based dump-on-panic mechanism on i386 Linux, this is not available on s390. > It seems that if I don't want to have a dump disk on every LIN-z system > then I need to do the VMDUMP. Could I have a pool of dump disks and link > to one when I need it? Would a SLES 9 dump disk dump a SLES 8 system? How > about a RedHat system? To quote myself from 09.01.2006: > "Romanowski, John (OFT)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 06.01.2006 19:43:34: > > But can the same dasd dump tool be used to dump either release of SLES? > > Do I have to use SLES8's tool to dump a SLES8 and SLES9's to dump a > > SLES9? > > You can use the zipl dump tool from either SLES8 or SLES9 to dump both > types of systems. The dump tool itself does not have any dependency on > the Linux version of the system to be dumped. It is advisable to use the > newer dump tool though (i.e. SLES9) to benefit from the latest bug fixes > and features. > > Note also that you can use the dump tool installed by a 64 bit (s390x) > system to dump 31 bit (s390) systems. The other way around is not possible > though, i.e. trying to dump a 64 bit system on a dasd on which the dump > record from a 31 bit system is installed will produce unreadable dumps. To answer your question: yes, a pool of dump disks would work, even across distributions. Regards, Peter Oberparleiter -- Peter Oberparleiter Linux on zSeries Development IBM Development Lab, Boeblingen/Germany ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
