What to do with core dumps?

[Chris Torek]

In article <4016 at silver.bacs.indiana.edu> regoli at silver.bacs.indiana.edu
(michael regoli) writes:
>what can you do with a core dump?  

A core file contains the exact state of the process%, even including
such things as open file descriptors.  Given the program itself and
a symbol table (and a debugger), you can extract a stack trace,
examine variables, and do anything else the debugger can do.

>when exiting from, say, a hung ftp session with ^\, what can you tell
>from the core file as to what happened and why?  how do you find out?

Since ftp clients usually hang because the server to which they were
listening simply stops speaking, the core file usually tells you nothing
you did not already know.

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% Since this is unix.questions, not unix.wizards, we can ignore per-
  process state that appears only in the proc table not in u.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris