Setting Up for a System Dump

You must prepare your system to store system dumps before the dump occurs. You add the TRAPDUMP statement described below to the CONFIG.SYS file on your system. The TRAPDUMP statement enables your system to store dump data.

The TRAPDUMP statement controls the system dump facility of OS/2. It will enable initiation of a system dump the instant a trap (error) occurs. The TRAPDUMP statement tells the system where to store the dump information: either on formatted diskettes or on your system's disk storage. Dumping to diskette is the default. A dump is stored on disk storage if the second parameter is used shown as X: in the TRAPDUMP statement example below.

The disk storage device on your system must have a file allocation table (FAT) partition with the volume label of SADUMP. TRAPDUMP accesses this partition when the dump information is stored. You specify the partition with second parameter in the TRAPDUMP statement.

Note: Do not specify a partition that contains vital data. When a dump is written to the partition, it overwrites any data that is in the partition.

To enable system dumps to be performed you need to add the following statement to the CONFIG.SYS file on your system:

TRAPDUMP= ì OFF | ON | R0 ┘ ì , ┘ X:

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 key sequence, Ctrl-Alt-F10-F10 key sequence, or the use of DosForceSystemDump in your code to force a system dump to be performed.
ON
Specifies that the stand-alone dump process will be automatically initiated whenever an unrecoverable trap occurs.
R0
Specifies that only ring zero traps will automatically initiate the system dump process.
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 to be written to the dump partition.

• The only removable media you can use for dump storage is diskettes.

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

• The system 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.

• When dumping to disk storage, the system is automatically re-booted on completion of the dump if there is a REIPL=ON statement in the CONFIG.SYS file. If the dump was stored on diskettes, the system will not be re-booted automatically.

You can add the REIPL statement to CONFIG.SYS to allow the system to re-boot (re-IPL) following an error.

The syntax of the statement is as follows:

REIPL=ON | OFF

The statement has the following parameters:

ON

This specifies the system it to be automatically re-booted following an error.
OFF
This specifies that the system is not to be automatically re-booted following an error. The system will remain hung until manually restarted.

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