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Reading a Kernel Dump

If your application crashes with a kernel fault, the output tells you what happened at the time of the crash. Here's a sample:

Shutdown[0,0] S/C/F=11/1/11 C/D=f001517d/f00571ac state(c0)= now lock
[0]PID-TID= 1-1? P/T FL=00019001/08800000 "proc/boot/procnto-instr"
[0]ASPACE PID=7 PF=00001010 "proc/boot/devb-eide"
x86 context[efffcc28]:
0000: 08088cc8 b0359320 efff2c3c efffcc48 b0357f14 08088d10 efff2c10
000000f8
0020: b0323948 0000001d 00011296 efff2c24 00000099
instruction[b0323948]:
ff 08 75 0e 8b 02 83 c4 f4 83 c0 08 50 e8 8e f5 fe ff 8b 5d e8 c9 c3 90
55 89
stack[efff2c24]:
0000: b0357f14 00000003 08088cc8 b0317d3d b0357f14 b0359320 efff2c6c
b033f692
0000: 8088d10 b033f49c efff2c5c b033f678 b0357f14 00000003 00100102 00000003

Here's what each part means:

S/C/F=11/1/11

Signal, code, and fault codes; see these files:

• signal: /usr/include/signal.h
• code: /usr/include/sys/siginfo.h
• fault: /usr/include/sys/fault.h

To find out what happened, search signal.h for the signal code. This tells you the name of the signal. Then, look in siginfo.h for the signal name. In this example, code 11 in signal.h is a SIGSEGV; in siginfo.h, code 1 in the SIGSEGV section is:

SEGV_MAPERR 1  // Address not mapped
  

C/D

Location of the kernel's code and data.

state

The state of the kernel:

• now -- in the kernel
• lock -- nonpreemptible
• exit -- leaving kernel
• specret -- special return processing
• any number -- the interrupt nesting level.

[x]PID-TID=y-z

The process ID and thread ID. On CPU x (think SMP), process y was running thread z when the crash occurred.

P/T FL

Process and thread flags. To find out which flags are set, look in /usr/nto/include/sys/neutrino.h. The process flags are in the form _NTO_PF_*, and the thread flags are in the form _NTO_TF_*.

[x]ASPACE PID=y

On CPU x, the address space for process y was active. This line appears only when the process is different from the one in the PID-TID line.

PF

The process flags for the ASPACE PID. In the sample above, devb-eide wasn't running, but its address space was active.

context

The register set. You can find the list of registers in /usr/nto/include/cpu/context.h, where cpu is the appropriate CPU-specific directory.

instruction

The instruction on which the error occurred.

stack

The contents of the stack.