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<chapter id="cha.introduction">
  <title>Introduction</title>

  <section id="sec.aboutlcrash">
    <title>About lcrash</title>
    <para>
      When your Linux system completely crashes or hangs the last thing
      you can do is to take a system memory dump and afterwards inspect the
      dump to identify the problem. 
      Inspecting the dump you can use lcrash - the Linux crash dump analyzer.
    </para>
    <para>
      lcrash is part of the lkcd project which was initiated by SGI.
      Please refer to the <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/lkcd">
	<citetitle>Project Home Page</citetitle> </ulink>
      for details regarding this project.
    </para>

    <para>
      lcrash has a command line interface with simple command line
      editing, history mechanism and - in recent versions -
      command line completion.
      Even a graphical interface exists for lcrash. It is called
      <command>qlcrash</command> and resides also at
      <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/lkcd">
	<citetitle>sourceforge</citetitle></ulink>.
    </para>

    <para>
      Some important features of lcrash are:
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    kernel structures are displayed in C-like fashion,
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    virtual to physical address translation is automatically performed,
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    kernel modules are supported when analyzing a dump.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </para>

  </section>

  <section id="sec.aboutthebook">
    <title>About this HOWTO</title>
    <para>
      This documentation was written because there was no document describing
      the usage of <command>lcrash</command>. It was started in June
      2001. After creation of first draft versions written in LaTeX it was
      decided to use sgml and DocBook 4.1 in order to be compliant with the LDP
      (Linux Documentation Project).
      At this step not only the conversion from TeX to DocBook was made but
      there were also added a couple of sections.
    </para>
    <para>
      This HOWTO covers <command>lcrash</command> version as of LKCD version
      4.0.
    </para>
    <para>
      The documentation is split into  several chapters. The next chapter
      gives information of where to get the code, and how to compile and
      install the program. In <xref linkend="cha.generalusage"> the general
      usage of <command>lcrash</command> is described.
      <xref linkend="cha.commandreference"> is a reference of lcrash commands.
      Besides descriptions of all lcrash commands there are also provided many
      examples for several commands.
    </para>
    <para>
      To complete the practical benefit of the documentation a
      <xref linkend="cha.samplesessions"> was included, which describes how to
      use <command>lcrash</command> in special  situations of analyzing
      Linux kernel dumps.
    </para>
    <para>
      If you have any questions regarding this document, its
      copyright, or publishing this document in non-electronic form,
      please contact <email>aherrman@de.ibm.com</email>.
    </para>
  </section>

</chapter>

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