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AutoRestart/iX Enhanced Functionality by Pat Alvarez Commercial Systems Division AutoRestart/iX has been enhanced to include the functionality for creating a mini-dump when the system goes down due to a system failure. AutoRestart/iX is used for preallocating the mini-dump, setting up the environment for creating the mini-dump, and configuring system failure numbers to indicate whether the mini-dump and a full dump will be taken. The mini-dump that is created consists of an ASCII file containing output from SAT summarizing the system failure. Specifically, the mini-dump contains a date and time stamp, the MPE/iX version identification, the system failure number, and a stack trace. The information in a mini-dump can be used to track system failures, and because it is relatively small, it can be easily transmitted across a network to notify a remote system manager. Though this feature can be used by any customer who has purchased the AutoRestart/iX product, the advantages and benefits of using it are mainly seen by those customers with large homogeneous environments (that is, many systems with similar configurations and operating system versions), and who also have a dedicated Hewlett-Packard support team. In addition, this feature provides advantages for those customers who are willing to experience a system failure more than once. In a homogeneous environment many duplicate problems may occur and therefore, this feature can be used to bypass taking a full memory dump for system failures that have already been encountered. Since Hewlett-Packard provides limited consultation on advanced planning when using mini-dump, a dedicated support team can keep track of the system failures that occur and can configure the mini-dump based on this. With the mini-dump, new problems cannot be diagnosed but repeat problems may be identified and therefore, those customers who are willing to experience a problem more than once can use this feature to minimize system recovery time. In addition, since this feature has been added to the AutoRestart/iX product, once it is set up, it can function in an operatorless environment and full dumps can be preconfigured to dump to disk. The mini-dump is not intended to replace a full memory dump. It merely provides a summary of the system failure. When a system failure occurs, a full memory dump must be taken so that a Hewlett-Packard Service Representative can diagnose the problem. For more details on these enhancements, refer to the related article in the "Technical Articles" section in this Communicator.