What is "kdump"

kdump may refer to:

• kdump (BSD), a BSD utility for viewing trace files generated by the ktrace utility
• kdump (Linux), Linux kernel's crash dump mechanism, which internally uses kexec

kdump is a feature of the Linux kernel that creates crash dumps in the event of a kernel crash. When triggered, kdump exports a memory image (also known as vmcore) that can be analyzed for the purposes of debugging and determining the cause of a crash. The dumped image of main memory, exported as an Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) object, can be accessed either directly through during the handling of a kernel crash, or it can be automatically saved to a locally accessible file system, to a raw device, or to a remote system accessible over network.