Intro to the Advanced Studies
To be successful in UNIX system crash dump analysis work, you need a variety of analysis skills and a good understanding of UNIX operating system anatomy. Without being able to comprehend how UNIX works, it is very difficult to identify how and why it fails.
This next section of Panic! introduces you to the more advanced topics. We will talk about assembly languages in general, and then SPARC assembly in detail. Overviews of the various components of the UNIX operating system are discussed. You'll read about stacks and stack tracebacks. We'll also cover traps and watchdog resets in great detail.
With the following chapters, we hope to increase your comfort level where the more advanced subjects are concerned . These are not, however, a substitute for advanced training.
If you are interested in reading and learning more about UNIX internals, a few excellent books are available, as well as UNIX Internals courses offered by UNIX vendors and UNIX training firms. We recommend these for the serious "guru-in-training."
