Making sense of a system coredump

[Mr. Science]

Im in a bind, and perhaps some kind soul out there can help me (at
least conceptually).  Our system (SGI Iris 4D) crashed this A.M.;
there was no trouble in restarting it, and I have strong suspicions on
what precipitated the crash.  What got my little pea-sized brain
working was the notice of /usr/adm/crash/vmcore.1 and unix.1.
According to the man page on savecore, this coredump is created in
response to a system crash.  I would like to examine these files to
track down the problem, but HOW DO I DO THIS????   The savecore man
page gives no hints.  I have tried looking at this file with dbx/edge
to no avail.  My question is : am I looking in the wrong place??  What
do I do with a system core dump (besides delete it...).

None of this system admin stuff makes sense to a former VAX/VMS system
manager... perhaps I just need to be pointed in the right direction.

Advice appreciated,
...pkm
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Patrick Martin
Martin at SLSVAX.Harvard.Edu
Martin at SLSIRIS.Harvard.Edu

Disclaimer: I get taxed too high to afford an opinion.
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