Getting help with scat

By Sandra Henry-Stocker

August 18, 2009, 1:47 PM — To illustrate some of the many commands available with scat, I'm going to start up scat in its shorthand fashion -- by providing the core dump "generation" as the only argument to the scat command.

# cd /var/crash
# scat 4

The "scat 4" command is shorthand for "scat unix.4 vmcore.4". You might have to add scat's bin directory to your $PATH first:

# export PATH=$PATH:/opt/SUNWscat/bin

After identifying itself (e.g., Solaris[TM] CAT 4.1 ...), scat opens the vmcore file (vmcore.4 in this example) and displays some information about the time of crash and the system on which it was generated.

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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 25 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She currently works for TeleCommunication Systems -- a company that builds innovative technologies to make critical connections happen -- where no one else necessarily shares any of her opinions. Send comments and suggestions to bugfarm@gmail.com.