core files (was Re: [SunHELP] GNOME 1.4 - unsupported evaluation)

[sunhelp at sunhelp.org]

On 25-May-01 at 22:46, Greg (gonufer at yahoo.com) wrote:
> > (I was also getting a core file from gnome_segv; but that was useless...
> > I really wish that Sun would take a clue from FreeBSD, et. al. and make
> > their core files come out as 'core.<progname>' instead of just 'core'.)
> 
> I really wish *BSD proponents would take a clue from the man pages.
> (I apologize in advance, you were just begging for it)

Actually, I've been using Sun's since the very first machine Sun
Microsystems ever sold.  And I was one of the few people who recognized
some of the improvements in Solaris over SunOS.  (Of course, there was
also a lot of really ugle AT&T cruft in the earlier Solaris releases.
Some of it is still there...)

I will admit to never having considered trying 'man -k core' just in
case they'd actually improved it...

> See coreadm(1M).
> 
> SunOS gives you, the user or sysadmin, control over core file names.
> Perhaps you'd want one where two core dumps from <progname> don't overwrite
> each other? "core.%f.%p".  Or where two core dumps from <progname> won't
> _ever_ overwrite each other, even in directories shared by more than one
> machine?  "core.%f.%n.%p.%t".

Ah, that's new.  Or at least relatively.  It certainly didn't
exist when I left Sun in 1994.  (At that time I was still trying
to convince some of the OS folks that always naming core files
simply 'core' was a bad idea.)

I still think they should change the default though...



-Pat