How to generate a core dump in Linux on a segmenta

Question

I have a process in Linux that's getting a segmentation fault. How can I tell it to generate a core dump when it fails?

Answer 1

It's worth mentioning that if you have a systemd set up, then things are a little bit different. The set up typically would have the core files be piped, by means of core_pattern sysctl value, through systemd-coredump(8). The core file size rlimit would typically be configured as "unlimited" already.

It is then possible to retrieve the core dumps using coredumpctl(1).

The storage of core dumps, etc. is configured by coredump.conf(5). There are examples of how to get the core files in the coredumpctl man page, but in short, it would look like this:

Find the core file:

[vps@phoenix]~$ coredumpctl list test_me | tail -1
Sun 2019-01-20 11:17:33 CET   16163  1224  1224  11 present /home/vps/test_me

Get the core file:

[vps@phoenix]~$ coredumpctl -o test_me.core dump 16163

Answer 2

Maybe you could do it this way, this program is a demonstration of how to trap a segmentation fault and shells out to a debugger (this is the original code used under AIX) and prints the stack trace up to the point of a segmentation fault. You will need to change the sprintf variable to use gdb in the case of Linux.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdarg.h>

static void signal_handler(int);
static void dumpstack(void);
static void cleanup(void);
void init_signals(void);
void panic(const char *, ...);

struct sigaction sigact;
char *progname;

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    char *s;
    progname = *(argv);
    atexit(cleanup);
    init_signals();
    printf("About to seg fault by assigning zero to *s\n");
    *s = 0;
    sigemptyset(&sigact.sa_mask);
    return 0;
}

void init_signals(void) {
    sigact.sa_handler = signal_handler;
    sigemptyset(&sigact.sa_mask);
    sigact.sa_flags = 0;
    sigaction(SIGINT, &sigact, (struct sigaction *)NULL);

    sigaddset(&sigact.sa_mask, SIGSEGV);
    sigaction(SIGSEGV, &sigact, (struct sigaction *)NULL);

    sigaddset(&sigact.sa_mask, SIGBUS);
    sigaction(SIGBUS, &sigact, (struct sigaction *)NULL);

    sigaddset(&sigact.sa_mask, SIGQUIT);
    sigaction(SIGQUIT, &sigact, (struct sigaction *)NULL);

    sigaddset(&sigact.sa_mask, SIGHUP);
    sigaction(SIGHUP, &sigact, (struct sigaction *)NULL);

    sigaddset(&sigact.sa_mask, SIGKILL);
    sigaction(SIGKILL, &sigact, (struct sigaction *)NULL);
}

static void signal_handler(int sig) {
    if (sig == SIGHUP) panic("FATAL: Program hanged up\n");
    if (sig == SIGSEGV || sig == SIGBUS){
        dumpstack();
        panic("FATAL: %s Fault. Logged StackTrace\n", (sig == SIGSEGV) ? "Segmentation" : ((sig == SIGBUS) ? "Bus" : "Unknown"));
    }
    if (sig == SIGQUIT) panic("QUIT signal ended program\n");
    if (sig == SIGKILL) panic("KILL signal ended program\n");
    if (sig == SIGINT) ;
}

void panic(const char *fmt, ...) {
    char buf[50];
    va_list argptr;
    va_start(argptr, fmt);
    vsprintf(buf, fmt, argptr);
    va_end(argptr);
    fprintf(stderr, buf);
    exit(-1);
}

static void dumpstack(void) {
    /* Got this routine from http://www.whitefang.com/unix/faq_toc.html
    ** Section 6.5. Modified to redirect to file to prevent clutter
    */
    /* This needs to be changed... */
    char dbx[160];

    sprintf(dbx, "echo 'where\ndetach' | dbx -a %d > %s.dump", getpid(), progname);
    /* Change the dbx to gdb */

    system(dbx);
    return;
}

void cleanup(void) {
    sigemptyset(&sigact.sa_mask);
    /* Do any cleaning up chores here */
}

You may have to additionally add a parameter to get gdb to dump the core as shown here in this blog here.

Answer 3

There are more things that may influence the generation of a core dump. I encountered these:

• the directory for the dump must be writable. By default this is the current directory of the process, but that may be changed by setting /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern.
• in some conditions, the kernel value in /proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable may prevent the core to be generated.

There are more situations which may prevent the generation that are described in the man page - try man core.

Answer 4

In order to activate the core dump do the following:

1. In /etc/profile comment the line:

   # ulimit -S -c 0 > /dev/null 2>&1
   

2. In /etc/security/limits.conf comment out the line:

   *               soft    core            0
   

3. execute the cmd limit coredumpsize unlimited and check it with cmd limit:

   # limit coredumpsize unlimited
   # limit
   cputime      unlimited
   filesize     unlimited
   datasize     unlimited
   stacksize    10240 kbytes
   coredumpsize unlimited
   memoryuse    unlimited
   vmemoryuse   unlimited
   descriptors  1024
   memorylocked 32 kbytes
   maxproc      528383
   #
   

4. to check if the corefile gets written you can kill the relating process with cmd kill -s SEGV <PID> (should not be needed, just in case no core file gets written this can be used as a check):

   # kill -s SEGV <PID>
   

Once the corefile has been written make sure to deactivate the coredump settings again in the relating files (1./2./3.) !

Answer 5

What I did at the end was attach gdb to the process before it crashed, and then when it got the segfault I executed the generate-core-file command. That forced generation of a core dump.

Answer 6

This depends on what shell you are using. If you are using bash, then the ulimit command controls several settings relating to program execution, such as whether you should dump core. If you type

ulimit -c unlimited

then that will tell bash that its programs can dump cores of any size. You can specify a size such as 52M instead of unlimited if you want, but in practice this shouldn't be necessary since the size of core files will probably never be an issue for you.

In tcsh, you'd type

limit coredumpsize unlimited