show stacks Command

show stacks Command

show stacks is an exec command that is commonly used to diagnose system crash situations. The first section of this command's output displays stack utilization of processes and interrupt routines, and the reason for the last system reboot. When a system crash happens, failure type, failure program counter (PC), address (operand address), and a stack trace are saved by the ROM Monitor. The show stacks command displays the data saved by the ROM Monitor. The stack trace is displayed in the second section of the show stacks command output (if there has been a system failure).
In the past, support engineers would submit the stack trace of their router to Cisco System's technical support representatives, who had access to symbol tables, object files, source code, and the stack decoder software. Today, the stack decoder is available online (from the CCO) and you can cut your router's stack trace from the output of the show stacks command and paste it in the input field of the stack decoder software. Stack decoder decodes the stack trace and creates a symbol file. The symbol file (perhaps along with other information in the trace) usually provides enough information to isolate the cause of any problems that were experienced.

Reference: http://www.ciscopress.com