lack of symbol tables in sgi distributions

Reuel Nash reuel at khaki.asd.sgi.com
Wed Sep 19 02:06:29 AEST 1990


In article <9009181645.AA18649 at mcirps2.med.nyu.edu>, karron at MCIRPS2.MED.NYU.EDU writes:
> Just to confuse the symbol table issue more, I note that most unix vendors
> leave the symbol table in /unix, and use it to debug a crashed kernel panic.
> 
I think a more important purpose for having the symbol table left in /unix
is so programs like ps, who, and sar can know the addresses of various
kernel data structures so they can be read or modified through /dev/kmem.
SGI's kernel provides a call (sysmp) that gives these addresses, but
some programs and most other vendor's systems still depend on the namelist in 
/unix.


Reuel Nash				Email:		reuel at sgi.sgi.com  
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