On Tue, Jul 11, 2000 at 02:21:17PM +1000, Peter Rundle wrote:
> Ok you've caught me out faking Linux expertise, I have no idea where to
> even start with doing a core debug....
just because i think core dumps are _way_ underrated:
gdb <executable> <corefile>
at the gdb prompt, type things like "where" to find out where the
program crashed.
if the executable has debugging symbols compiled in, you'll get a
pretty backtrace (and be able to look at variable values, etc). if it
doesn't, then you'll just get assembly and the odd cryptic linker
symbol (which may still be useful).
i think its a real shame that core dumps are turned off (the size is
limited to 0. see ulimit(1), limit(1) or getrlimit(2)) by default on
most linux distros. core dumps are an excellent way of catching those
one-in-a-million unreproducible bugs, without slowing your program
down with debugging code.
and if you find a stray core file, "file core" will usually be able to
tell you what program produced the core dump
--
- Gus
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
