Solaris Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris

In this chapter we explore the rudimentary facilities within MDB for analyzing kernel crash images and debugging live kernels. The objective is not to provide an all-encompassing kernel crash analysis tutorial, but rather to introduce the most relevant MDB dcmds and techniques.

A more comprehensive guide to crash dump analysis can be found in some of the recommended reference texts, for example, Panic! by Chris Drake and Kimberly Brown for SPARC [8], and "Crash Dump Analysis" by Frank Hoffman for x86/x64 [12].