Introduction to Crash Dump Analysis and the SunOS Kernel

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Introduction to Crash Dump Analysis and the SunOS Kernel :: [ST-375]

course schedule			who can benefit
prerequisites			skills gained
other notes			course content
related solutions

code.

ST-375

length.

5 days

type.

Instructor-Led

partner.

Sun Microsystems

price.

$3,500 :: $2,975 GSA GOV.

This course replaces ST-370: Core Dump Analysis

The Introduction to Crash Dump Analysis and the SunOS Kernel course provides students with essential skills to diagnose and resolve system problems, beginning with whether a system problem is due to hardware or software. If it's hardware, which piece of hardware is causing the problem? If it's software, is there a patch that fixes this problem? What tools can be used to help identify the causes of system problems? Where can they be obtained, and how are they used? This course helps learners to answer these questions and to identify and resolve basic Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) problems successfully.

This course repackages:

	ISA-160: Introduction to Solaris Crash Analysis
	ISA-165: Kernel Overview
	ISA-170: Introduction to fm
	ISA-175: Introduction to adb, mdb, and crash

San Jose, CA	dec.8.2008 - dec.12.2008	register

Broomfield, CO	jan.12.2009 - jan.16.2009	register
Edison, NJ	mar.16.2009 - mar.20.2009	register
New York, NY	jan.12.2009 - jan.16.2009	register

who can benefit

Students who can benefit from this course are experienced system administrators and support personnel at self-supporting Sun installations, as well as third-party driver developers.

prerequisites

To succeed fully in this course, students should be able to:

	Administer the Solaris OS on a Sun server
	Understand basic operating system concepts
	Use a World Wide Web (WWW) browser, such as the Netscape browser
	Manipulate files and directories on a UNIX file system
	Be familiar with fault analysis and problem-solving techniques
	Access the messages file
	Boot a Solaris OE machine
	Modify OpenBoot PROM (OBP) variables
	Use the SunSolve(SM) program effectively
	Have a SunSolve account to access other than the free collections
	Modify swap partition sizes
	Have some familiarity with C programming concepts and syntax

skills gained

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

	Distinguish software-caused system crashes from hardware-caused system crashes
	Retrieve initial analysis information from a crash dump using Solaris CAT, ACT, the adb debugger, and the mdb debugger
	Distinguish among unique panic string, bad trap, and hang crash dumps
	Identify appropriate SunSolve search strings for unique panic string and bad trap crash dumps
	Use the SunSolve program to find bugs and cases related to the crash dumps or error messages
	Given a C structure declaration, describe how the data structure is stored in memory and how it looks when displayed by Solaris CAT, the adb debugger, and the mdb debugger
	Describe the major kernel subsystems and use Solaris CAT, the adb debugger, and the mdb debugger to display the subsystems' related data structures

obtaining prerequisites

Courses and reading to help students obtain these prerequisites include:

	SA-239: Intermediate System Administration for the Solaris 9 Operating System
	SA-299: Advanced System Administration for the Solaris 9 Operating System
	The book Panic! by Chris Drake and Kimberly Brown

related courses, exams and materials

	before related training and products

	SA-239 Intermediate System Administration for the Solaris 9 OS
	SA-299 Advanced System Administration for the Solaris 9 OS

	after related training and products

	SP-365 Solaris 9 Operating Environment Internals
	ST-475 Advanced Crash Dump Analysis

course content details

	Module 1 - Gathering Information

	Obtain system environment information
	Collect system crash data
	Determine if a system is hung
	Obtain a crash dump from a hung system
	Force crash dumps for hard hangs
	Describe the mechanism and system resources necessary to create crash dumps
	Describe how to configure a system to save crash dumps
	Troubleshoot crash dump failures
	Describe and run SunExplorer software
	Describe system information used to analyze a system crash

	Module 2 - Analyzing Information

	Differentiate between software and hardware problems
	Interpret the output from the prtdiag utility
	Interpret the output from the Sun Explorer software
	Analyze patch information
	Describe the types of device names and their components
	Display the device tree
	Interpret information in the messages file
	Interpret memory error messages

	Module 3 - Understanding Data Structures

	Describe how a C language structure looks in memory
	Describe how a pointer is used in the C language
	Describe linked lists
	Describe stacks
	Describe hashing

	Module 4 - Analyzing System Crash Dumps

	Define common terms used in describing information in crash dumps
	Describe the information used for initial crash dump analysis
	Describe information sources within the SunSolve program that are useful for resolving system crashes
	Describe the type of information available in bug reports
	Use the SunSolve program to locate technical information, bugs, and patches related to system crashes
	Appropriately use the kenv tool
	Use Automated Crash Tool (ACT) to obtain initial crash dump information
	Use the adb debugger to obtain initial crash dump information
	Use the Modular Debugger (MDB) to obtain initial crash dump information
	Use Solaris Crash Analysis Tool (CAT) to obtain initial crash dump information

	Module 5 - Introducing Kernel Features and Organization

	Describe the advantages of a modular kernel
	Define the difference between the SunOS software package and the Solaris OS package
	Describe the location of kernel modules on disk
	Describe the components of the SunOS software
	Describe user processes
	Describe interrupts
	Describe multithreading
	Describe the location of structure definitions

	Module 6 - Exploring Kernel Services

	Describe the major kernel services
	Describe what traps are and how they are processed
	Describe how system calls are processed
	Describe what synchronization and protection are and why they are needed
	Describe the Solaris OS locking mechanisms
	Describe signals and how they are processed
	Describe how interrupts of various levels are processed
	Describe kernel clock handling
	Describe what callouts are and how they are stored and processed
	Describe what cyclics are and what parts of the kernel are clients of this service

	Module 7 - Examining the Process Subsystem

	Draw an image of a running multithreaded process
	Describe multithreading in the kernel and processes
	Identify the structures used by the kernel to support a process
	Describe the process life cycle, including thread creation
	Describe how threads are scheduled
	Describe priority inversion and how the kernel resolves the problem
	Describe how time stamps are used in the kernel
	Describe how the kernel controls processors

	Module 8 - Examining the Memory Subsystem

	Describe memory management issues from the kernel perspective
	Describe paged memory
	Identify the process structures used in address translation
	Describe anonymous memory
	Describe kernel page structures and their use
	Describe the MMU and the HAT layer
	Describe the kernel address space
	Describe kernel memory allocation
	Describe paging and swapping

	Module 9 - Examining the File and I/O Subsystem

	Describe the user's view of the UNIX file system
	Describe the basic file system structure
	Describe the virtual file system framework
	Describe how file system mounting and path name resolution are accomplished
	Describe the use of the Directory Name Lookup Cache (DNLC)
	Describe the UFS file system specific data structures
	Describe process file management
	Describe the use of the specfs file system
	Describe the kernel device tree
	Draw a simple stream and explain its elements