Date: November 29, 2016

The r2dump debug  tool loads a kernel extension that replaces the reboot system call in the AIX kernel, with code that will simply force system dump instead of reboot. It can be used on AIX 6.1 TL06 (or later versions) and any AIX 7.1 and 7.2 systems.

To download the r2dump debug tool:

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/tools/dumptools/
This contains:
dbgr2dump.161110.epkg.Z
README.TXT


To apply the r2dump debug tool:
  # emgr -X -e dbgr2dump.161110.epkg.Z (run from the directory where you saved it)


To see if debug tool is applied
  # emgr -l
To remove:
  #emgr -r -L dbgr2dump
----------------------------

To enable the tool, run  "/opt/AIX/r2dump/r2dump -e /opt/AIX/r2dump"

To automatically reload the extension after a system reboot, put this command in inittab:
r2dump:2:once:/opt/AIX/r2dump/r2dump -e /opt/AIX/r2dump>/dev/console 2>&1

If you want to reboot the system without collecting a dump, you can simply unload the kernel extension:

/opt/AIX/r2dump/r2dump -d /opt/AIX/r2dump


Or, you can add the above line to /etc/rc.shutdown and the kernel extension will be automatically disabled when you run a reboot or shutdown from the command line.