TRAPDUMP

Warning: Potential Data Loss

Misuse of this facility may cause loss of vital data. Please read carefully the complete description before use.

The TRAPDUMP command controls the stand-alone (system) dump facility of OS/2. It will enable initiation of a stand-alone dump at the instant a ring 3 trap occurs for which no exception handler has intervened.

Ring 0 traps may be also intercepted only on 2.11 systems to which APAR PJ12258 has been applied (kernel revision 6.624), or on OS/2 Warp.

Pre-Warp considerations: The dump process is performed by the hidden module OS2DUMP, which resides in the root directory of the boot drive. OS2DUMP as supplied with GA versions of OS/2 2.x dumps only to diskette. It may be replaced with a version supplied with OS/2 Problem Determination Package (OS2PDP) which will dump to a hard disk FAT partition that has volume label SADUMP or to diskette, depending upon TRAPDUMP command specification.

The GA 2.x version of OS2DUMP requires the first dump diskette be freshly prepared using the CREATEDD command and subsequent diskettes to be formatted. See the on-line OS/2 Command Reference for details of CREATEDD.

The OS/2 Problem Determination Package (OS2PDP) version of OS2DUMP only requires formatted diskettes, the use of CREATEDD being redundant.

When dumping to hard disk the dump partition must to be made known to TRAPDUMP. This is done by specifying an optional second parameter.

OS/2 Warp considerations: Under OS/2 Warp the CREATEDD command is unnecessary and is not distributed with the system. Ordinarily formatted diskettes may be used. Furthermore the enhanced version of OS2DUMP that allows dumping to a hard-disk FAT partition is standard. The partition volume label must be SADUMP.

Syntax.

     TRAPDUMP=[ON|OFF|R0][,PD][,]X:

Parameters

ON

Specifies that the stand-alone dump process will be automatically initiated whenever an unrecoverable ring 3 trap occurs. For 2.11 systems with APAR PJ12258 or OS/2 Warp, any system IPE (including ring 0 traps) will also initiate a dump when ON is specified.
OFF
Specifies that the stand-alone dump process will not initiate automatically when an unrecoverable trap occurs. This is the default option. It does not prohibit the use of the Ctrl-Alt-Numlock-Numlock or Ctrl-Alt-F10-F10 key sequence or the use of DosForceSystemDump to force a system dump to be initiated.
R0
Specifies that only ring zero traps and IPEs will automatically initiate the stand-alone dump process. This option applies only to 2.11 systems with APAR PJ12258 or OS/2 Warp.

Note:

When an IPE occurs the dump is taken immediately on displaying the IPE trap screen. For the purposes of dump analysis the formatted registers from the IPE screen should be located from the video buffer, which may be viewed using the analyse option from PMDF.

PD
Specifies that a system level process dump will be attempted if the user uses either the Ctrl-Alt-Numlock-Numlock or Ctrl-Alt-F10-F10 key sequences. If for some reason the process dump doesn not compete, a second key sequence will initiate a system dump. On completion of either the system or process dump, the system is re-booted automatically.
X:
specifies the hard-disk FAT partition to which OS2DUMP will write a stand-alone dump. The partition letter must have the colon suffix.

Note:

The partition may be specified with either ON or OFF. When specified with OFF it will allow a stand-alone dump initiated by Ctrl-Alt-Numlock-Numlock or Ctrl-Alt-F10-F10 key sequences to be written to the dump partition.

Mountable media other than diskette drives are not detectable by OS2DUMP. The letter specifying the dump partition must be calculated as if any such media were not present.

Only hard disk logical drives and primary partitions may be specified.

When dumping to a hard disk partition is selected the system is automatically re-booted on completion of the dump.

System Dump parameter may also be set dynamically from the command line by using the TRAPDUMP command.

Warnings:

The stand-alone dump process will erase all data on the dump media (disk partition or diskettes) before writing the dump.

Do not specify a disk partition or use diskettes that contain vital data.

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