Re: [RFC] New command 'gcore'

Jason R Thorpe
2001-12-12T23:29:36Z

On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 01:04:00AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > From: Michael Snyder <msnyder@cygnus.com>
> > Newsgroups: cygnus.patches.gdb
> > Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 14:01:04 -0800
> >
> > The idea is that 'gcore' would cause gdb to generate a core image
> > of the inferior program (just like the 'gcore' unix command).
> > The user could drop a core file at any point in the inferior's
> > execution, and save the memory and register state for debugging later.
> > We ought to be able to cook up an elf core file pretty easily using
> > bfd.
>
> Sounds great!

Yah, gcore is cool, but it generally requires support from the kernel
in one way or another:

* You need to know which chunks of the address space are
actually mapped, and the protection of those regions.

* You need to know if a given chunk of the address space
should be dumped, even if it is mapped (consider a
memory-mapped device where reads produce side-effects).

* You need to know how many LWPs there are, and need to
be able to iterate over them.

--
-- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>