xref: /netbsd-src/share/man/man5/core.5 (revision dc306354b0b29af51801a7632f1e95265a68cd81)
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34.\"     @(#)core.5	8.3 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
35.\"
36.Dd December 11, 1993
37.Dt CORE 5
38.Os BSD 4
39.Sh NAME
40.Nm core
41.Nd memory image file format
42.Sh SYNOPSIS
43.Fd #include <sys/param.h>
44.Sh DESCRIPTION
45A small number of signals which cause abnormal termination of a process
46also cause a record of the process's in-core state to be written
47to disk for later examination by one of the available debuggers.
48(See
49.Xr sigaction 2 . )
50This memory image is written to a file
51in the working directory;
52provided the terminated process had write permission in the directory,
53and provided the abnormality did not cause
54a system crash.
55(In this event, the decision to save the core file is arbitrary, see
56.Xr savecore 8 . )
57The file is normally named
58.Nm programname.core ,
59but is called
60.Nm core
61if the
62kernel configuration option
63.Cd options SHORTCORENAME
64is defined or the sysctl variable
65.Em kern.shortcorename
66is set to 1.
67.Pp
68The maximum size of a
69.Nm programname.core
70file is limited by
71.Xr setrlimit 2 .
72Files which would be larger than the limit are not created.
73.Pp
74The
75.Nm programname.core
76file consists of the
77.Fa u .
78area, whose size (in pages) is
79defined by the
80.Dv UPAGES
81manifest in the
82.Aq Pa sys/param.h
83file.  The
84.Fa u .
85area starts with a
86.Fa user
87structure as given in
88.Aq Pa sys/user.h .
89The remainder of the
90.Nm programname.core
91file consists of the data pages followed by
92the stack pages of the process image.
93The amount of data space image in the
94.Nm programname.core
95file is given (in pages) by the
96variable
97.Fa u_dsize
98in the
99.Fa u .
100area.
101The amount of stack image in the core file is given (in pages) by the
102variable
103.Fa u_ssize
104in the
105.Ar u .
106area.
107The size of a ``page'' is given by the constant
108.Dv NBPG
109(also from
110.Aq Pa sys/param.h ) .
111.Sh SEE ALSO
112.Xr gdb 1 ,
113.Xr sigaction 2 ,
114.Xr setrlimit 2
115.Sh HISTORY
116A
117.Nm core
118file format appeared in
119.At v6 .
120