Customer Reviews

PANIC! UNIX System Crash Dump Analysis Handbook (Bk/CD-ROM)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A very good text with three parts. The first is about using adb, and it's full of examples and exercises. After reading it you will see the reason this old tool is still heavily used and will be able to use it yourself.

The second is an overview of the internal structure of UNIX in general with many details on Solaris, that you won't find anywhere else. It's an enlightning view of the inner design of Solaris.

The third part is a case history of some crash dumps analysis and what was done to discover the problems that caused it. It's almost as good as a good spying book ! . In my opinion it's the best part of the book, but you'll need to read the first two to understand it.

All in all, an unavoidable book for the writers-to-be of device drivers and other kernel modules, maybe the best one. But I won't use it as a reference book.

I believe this book is not only an exceptional tutorial on crash dump debugging techniques but also a good review of the Solaris kernel architecture and data structures. The authors have done a great job explaining such highly technical and complicated topics like processor architecuture, stacks, file system data structures, adb, assembly code, etc. Not exactly bed-time reading!

Although some of the examples are a little bit out of date (Sparc V9 and Solaris 8 are the industry norm more or less) and a second edition is becoming more and more a necessity, I will still give this book 5+ stars.

The excellent presentation and exemplary technical make Crash! (relatively) very easy to read but several years of strong Solaris experience, a good understanding of computer architecure, OS fundamentals, data structures, and some knowledge of C are still required for full comprehension of the content.

Before diving into this book I would strongly encourage the potential reader to at least review "UNIX Internals: The New Frontiers" by Uresh Vahalia, "Design of the Unix Operating System" by Marice J. Bach, Maurice Bach or "Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Architecture" by Jim Mauro, Richard McDougall.

What the other reviewers have said in consensus, I'll just stipulate: this book is a gentle but comprehensive introduction to core file analysis; it's also an excellent reference on kernel architecture. For its clarity of technical writing, it deserve some kind of award, considering how deathly-dull the subject matter can be. I couldn't stay awake through one pass of the assembly code illustrations, but I don't think the writers could have helped that. This book is a nonetheless a triumph, albeit a dated one.

Now, c'mon, Prentice-Hall, help the audience out! This book was written in 1995. It uses Solaris 2.3 and sun4d architecture as its latest and greatest. Solaris (2.)8 has been out for a while and 9 is on the way; sparcv9/64-bit architecture is here; mdb, the modular debugger, is going to replace adb; the book *must* be updated. It would be a crime to let it die now -- there's still no competitive title on the market.

The book is non-technical enough that I couldn't make all the changes needed to get the older examples to work. If I ever do, though, maybe I'll be good enough to write a competitive title myself...

That said, even if the next edition were to out in three months, I'd still buy this one now to get started; it's that good.

Okay, I'll admit that the topic of debugging kernel panics is one that will give most sysadmins fits and put others to sleep. However, the ability to dig up just exactly what caused your kernel to panic is a skill that can be mastered with this book. The authors do an excellent job of explaining SPARC architecture in a non-engineer oriented way. I have found this book to be very helpful in my work. Please note that this book is specific to Sun Solaris only (I would like see a 2nd edition that covers everything up to Solaris 8).

Note, the iscda script provided in the cdrom does not work with Solaris 2.6 and up. You can get the updated version at: http://www.piaffe.org/panic/macros/iscda-2X

Very good book - every one who want to know more about kernel engineering should buy it - but do not expect that will you find there only examples - loots of coments relating system devices and services . But if you are not 3+ years expiriences Solaris admin , don't buy it - there is loots of assembler languige suplements etc ..

A real easy book to read, and very nice. My only take on the book is that it's old, So, no 2.6 or up versions. It's all about SunOS. It's one of the very very few books about crash dump analysis. As a matter of fact, I am not aware of any other book about that. If you are, please let me know. It's one of the easiest books that you can lay your hands on, to get started in adb.

The book was great and gives a detailed step by step analysis of the crash dumps

This book will be very useful for guys who work in Sparc and who expect their hour and second in looking at Traps and crashes and Sync.... Sync..'s

It is a great book! Don't just read it USE it.

This is the only Unix system panic analysis book on the market. Fortunately, it is a pretty good book. Any one who involve in core dump analysis should get this.