Dumping a process on IOS-XR

In this post,  we will look at how to dump a process that's running under  IOS-XR. The  tasks and steps are quite simple btw.  The dump proc is a off shoot of the QNX/Unix  "dumper" command.

The very 1st step is to find the process you would like to dump.

The show process | incl < process name or pid >  is one of many ways. In this example we will dump the sshd  daemon that running for remote management access.

Next we need to find the location that our dumpfile to be stored at. The  show exception  cmd will display our possible collection areas.

1:  the dump file is compress with unix compress
2:  you can uncompress with gzip
3:  due to the dumpsize could be  large

Now to dump our sshd proce, we execute the dump command.

The log will show the dump and the path to  the dump.

Key points;

• compression is used for space saving
• compress can be disable  by configuration in config mode  ( exception compress  off )
• if you dump a process you can perform this operation without interruption
• proc dumps helps cisco-tac with trouble-shooting specific process issues

NOTE: an alternative method for dumping a process is to perform this via the admin-mode  and by using the process command & crashing the process. This is the same as a unix Kill with the appropiate signals for dumping.

Ken Felix
NSE ( Network Security Expert) and Route/Switching Engineer
kfelix  -----a----t---- socpuppets ---dot---com
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