Hi,

The phrase "Checking for core dump" is part of the output from the
"savecore" command.  Basically if something amiss in the kernel causes
the machine to crash, it stores a "core image" in the swap partition.
This core image include copies of the running kernel and all running
processes, etc.  It is the job of "savecore" to check your swap partition
and if it finds a core, save it to disk in case you want to probe through
it later to find out what happened(not recommended for the faint of heart).

The "savecore" command is executed from /etc/rc.  You are probably facing
a couple of options.  First option is to grab a new copy of savecore.  This
assumes that your copy of "savecore" is corrupted, bad, or really old.  It
could also be the case that your swap partition is bad, or corrupted.  Also
possible is that you've put the swap partition somewhere that the kernel
doesn't like.  Most of the kernels out there want it on the same disk as
the root partition.  Do you have swap listed in your /etc/fstab??  I'm not
sure if "savecore" looks in /etc/fstab or actually munges around in the kernel
to find your swap setup(I would suspect it just looks at /etc/fstab).

The second option is to just comment out "savecore" from your /etc/rc file.
This will get you past that stage the quickest.  Just for your information
a normal exit from "savecore" would include either a message that no cores
were found or a message indicating that it was saving the core image to disk
(I forget the exact wording but that's close enough).

Steve Brown,
sbrown@best.com

>> Please help.
>> I installed perl5 on my Mac IIx under netbsd 1.1 the other
>> day and now when it boots it gets most of the way through
>>  and stops at:
>>
>> starting rpc daemons: portmap
>> starting system logger, time daemontimed: no network usable
>> .
>> checking for core dump...
>>
>>
>> and then does no more.
>
>That's me asking for help. I didn't get a response from anyone on this but
>I did work around the problem by booting in single user mode, which let it
>get past this "checking for core dump" and then switching to multi user. I
>did an fsck and it seems all right. Does anyone have any idea why this
>occured? I can't find reference to it in the FAQ. As I said, I can work
>around it but I'd like to know what it means.
>- Scott
>
>
>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>@ -D. Scott Beach, B.A.A., G.D.S. (generally decent sort)
>@ sbeach@front.net
>@ sbeach@mhpublishing.com
>@ douglas_beach@magic.ca
>@ Toronto, Ontario, Canada                      GROK.
>@ (416) 596-5001 office                                      -R.A.H.
>@ Maclean Hunter Publishing Ltd.
>@ Macintosh Support Specialist
>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@