3.4 Generating a Core File on Errors

If the error-abort debug token has been enabled, when the library detects any problems with the heap memory, it will immediately attempt to dump a core file. See section Description of the Debugging Tokens. Core files are a complete copy of the program and it's state and can be used by a debugger to see specifically what is going on when the error occurred. See section Using Dmalloc With a Debugger. By default, the low, medium, and high arguments to the library utility enable the error-abort token. You can disable this feature by entering dmalloc -m error-abort (-m for minus) to remove the error-abort token and your program will just log errors and continue. You can also use the error-dump token which tries to dump core when it sees an error but still continue running. See section Description of the Debugging Tokens.

When a program dumps core, the system writes the program and all of its memory to a file on disk usually named `core'. If your program is called `foo' then your system may dump core as `foo.core'. If you are not getting a `core' file, make sure that your program has not changed to a new directory meaning that it may have written the core file in a different location. Also insure that your program has write privileges over the directory that it is in otherwise it will not be able to dump a core file. Core dumps are often security problems since they contain all program memory so systems often block their being produced. You will want to check your user and system's core dump size ulimit settings.

The library by default uses the abort function to dump core which may or may not work depending on your operating system. If the following program does not dump core then this may be the problem. See KILL_PROCESS definition in `settings.dist'.

main()
{
  abort();
}

If abort does work then you may want to try the following setting in `settings.dist'. This code tries to generate a segmentation fault by dereferencing a NULL pointer.

#define KILL_PROCESS    { int *_int_p = 0L; *_int_p = 1; }

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