[indiana-discuss] being more friendly in the face of panics

[Tim Foster]

Hi all,

I just uploaded a prototype of an SMF service that can be used instead
of the existing svc:/system/dumpadm:default service.

More at
http://blogs.sun.com/timf/entry/friendly_dumpadm_0_1

It does exactly the same as the original service, but also, after having
run savecore(1M), if a dump was saved, it creates a quick summary of the
crash, and sleeps, waiting for a user to login to X.

Once that user logs in, it displays the crash summary, and asks the user
if they want that summary mailed to someone helpful.


I wrote it because I'd come across several people, unfamiliar with
OpenSolaris were complaining that their machines had spontaneously
rebooted - in fact their machines had panicked, but they didn't know it.

After I had pointed them at mdb & explained a bit about crash dumps, I
thought it might be nice if the system was able to give them a hand, and
tell them what had happened: so this could be one way of doing that.

Thoughts/comments welcome ?

	cheers,
			tim

-- 
Tim Foster, Sun Microsystems Inc, Solaris Engineering Ops
http://blogs.sun.com/timf