Can I configure what goes into a core dump on Linux? I want to obtain something like the Windows mini-dumps (minimal information about the stack frame when the app crashed). I know you can set a max size for the core files using ulimit
, but this does not allow me to control what goes inside the core (i.e. there is no guarantee that if I set the limit to 64kb it will dump the last 16 pages of the stack, for example).
Also, I would like to set it in a programmatic way (from code), if possible.
I have looked at the /proc/PID/coredump_filter
file mentioned by man core
, but it seems too coarse grained for my purposes.
To provide a little context: I need tiny core files, for multiple reasons: I need to collect them over the network, for numerous (thousands) of clients; furthermore, these are embedded devices with little SD cards, and GPRS modems for the network connection. So anything above ~200k is out of question.
EDIT: I am working on an embedded device which runs linux 2.6.24. The processor is PowerPC. Unfortunately, powerpc-linux is not supported in breakpad at the moment, so google breakpad is not an option
I have "solved" this issue in two ways:
strip
; from there, I will use add22line
with the info saved from the backtrace (addresses) to understand where the problem happened. This way I have to store only a few bytes.I still lose information that could be precious (global and local variable(s) content, params..). I could easily figure out which page(s) to dump, but unfortunately there is no way to specify a "dump-these-pages" for normal core dumps (unless you are willing to go and patch the maydump()
function in the kernel).
For now, I'm quite happy with there 2 solutions (it is better than nothing..) My next moves will be:
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