What is a system crash?

Since the beginning of time, midnight January 1st, 1970 according to UNIX, computer systems have crashed. A system crash often refers to several different conditions where the system has suddenly become useless. These include:

• System panics & bad traps

• Watchdog resets

• Dropping out (to boot PROM or bootstrap level)

In this chapter, we will limit our discussion to panics and bad traps.