xref: /freebsd/share/man/man5/core.5 (revision 19dd549aca1ca3021af4c353fe0f5df4dc7a761f)
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32.\"     @(#)core.5	8.3 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
33.\"	$Id: core.5,v 1.5 1997/02/22 13:25:57 peter Exp $
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35.Dd December 11, 1993
36.Dt CORE 5
37.Os BSD 4
38.Sh NAME
39.Nm core
40.Nd memory image file format
41.Sh SYNOPSIS
42.Fd #include <sys/param.h>
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44A small number of signals which cause abnormal termination of a process
45also cause a record of the process's in-core state to be written
46to disk for later examination by one of the available debuggers.
47(See
48.Xr sigaction 2 . )
49This memory image is written to a file named
50.Nm programname.core
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 . )
57.Pp
58The maximum size of a
59.Nm programname.core
60file is limited by
61.Xr setrlimit 2 .
62Files which would be larger than the limit are not created.
63.Pp
64The
65.Nm programname.core
66file consists of the
67.Fa u .
68area, whose size (in pages) is
69defined by the
70.Dv UPAGES
71manifest in the
72.Aq Pa sys/param.h
73file.  The
74.Fa u .
75area starts with a
76.Fa user
77structure as given in
78.Aq Pa sys/user.h .
79The remainder of the
80.Nm programname.core
81file consists of the data pages followed by
82the stack pages of the process image.
83The amount of data space image in the
84.Nm programname.core
85file is given (in pages) by the
86variable
87.Fa u_dsize
88in the
89.Fa u .
90area.
91The amount of stack image in the core file is given (in pages) by the
92variable
93.Fa u_ssize
94in the
95.Ar u .
96area.
97The size of a ``page'' is given by the constant
98.Dv PAGE_SIZE
99(also from
100.Aq Pa sys/param.h ) .
101.Sh SEE ALSO
102.Xr gdb 1 ,
103.Xr kgdb 1 ,
104.Xr setrlimit 2 ,
105.Xr sigaction 2
106.Sh HISTORY
107A
108.Nm core
109file format appeared in
110.At v6 .
111