Using CLUE to Obtain Historical Information
About Crash Dumps (VAX Only)
On VAX systems, the Crash Log Utility Extractor (CLUE) displays
the contents of a crash history file. By examining
the contents of the crash history file, you can understand and resolve
the issues responsible for failures (crashes), and you might also
obtain other useful data.
Understanding CLUE (VAX Only) The crash history file, which is created and updated by CLUE,
contains key parameters from crash dump files. Unlike crash dumps,
which are overwritten with each system failure and are therefore
typically available only for the most recent failure, the crash
history file is a permanent record of system failures.
After a system fails and physical memory is copied to the
crash dump file, CLUE automatically appends the relevant parameters
to the file CLUE$OUTPUT:CLUE$HISTORY.DATA when the system is restarted.
The remainder of this section describes how you can use CLUE to
display the data it has collected; reference information about CLUE
is available in the HP OpenVMS System Management Utilities Reference Manual.
The history file typically grows by about 10 to 15 blocks
for each entry. You can limit the number of entries in the binary
file by defining the logical name CLUE$MAX_ENTRIES to be the maximum
number desired. When this number is reached, the oldest entries
are deleted from the history file.
By default, operator shutdowns are recorded in the history
file. You can exclude information from operator shutdowns in the
history file by defining the logical name CLUE$EXCLUDE_OPERS as
being TRUE, for example by including the following line in SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM:
$ DEFINE /SYSTEM CLUE$EXCLUDE_OPERS TRUE
Displaying Data Using CLUE (VAX Only) To display data using CLUE, you must first define the following
symbol:
$ CLUE :== $CLUE
After defining the symbol, you can use CLUE to display information
by entering the following command:
$ CLUE/DISPLAYCLUE_DISPLAY>
At the CLUE_DISPLAY> prompt, you can issue commands to perform the
following actions:
Use the DIRECTORY command to list
failures that have occurred since a specified date, failures of
a particular type, failures that contain a specified module, and
failures that have a specified offset. For example, you can list all the failures in the history
file using the DIRECTORY command, as follows:
CLUE_DISPLAY> DIRECTORY
Use the SHOW command to generate information similar
to that obtained from certain commands in the System Dump Analyzer
utility (SDA). For example, if you wanted complete information about the
crash listed as crash number 7, the following SHOW command would
provide the information:
CLUE_DISPLAY> SHOW ALL 7
Use the EXTRACT command to write the data from an
entry to a file. For example, the following command writes the data from entry
number 7 in the crash history file to a file named 15MAYCRASH.TXT:
CLUE_DISPLAY> EXTRACT 7/OUTPUT=15MAYCRASH.TXT
For more information about CLUE commands, refer to the HP OpenVMS System Management Utilities Reference Manual: A--L.