core.4 (2010 09)

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core(4) core(4)

NAME

core - format of core image ﬁle

DESCRIPTION

The HP-UX system writes out a ﬁle containing a core image of a terminated process when certain signals

are received (see signal (5) for the list of reasons). The most common causes are memory violations, ille-

gal instructions, ﬂoating point exceptions, bus errors, and user-generated quit signals. The core image

ﬁle is called

core and is written in the process’s working directory (provided it is allowed by normal

access controls). A process with an effective user ID different from its real user ID does not produce a

core image.

The ﬁle contains sufﬁcient information to determine what the process was doing at the time of its termi-

nation. Core ﬁle contents consist of objects that represent different segments of a process. Each object is

preceded by a

corehead data structure, and each

corehead data structure describes the correspond-

ing object following it. The structure is deﬁned in

<sys/core.h>, and includes the following members:

int type;

space_t space;

caddr_t addr;

size_t len;

The space and addr members specify the virtual memory address in the process where the described

object began. The len member is the length of the object in bytes.

The following possible values for type are deﬁned in

<sys/core.h>:

CORE_DATA Process data as it existed at the time the core image was created. This includes

initialized data, uninitialized data, and the heap at the time the core image is

generated.

CORE_EXEC A compiler-dependent data structure containing the exec data structure, the

magic number of the executable ﬁle, and the command (see the declaration of

the proc_exec structure in <sys/core.h>).

CORE_FORMAT The version number of the core format produced. This number changes with

each HP-UX release where the core format itself has changed. However, it does

not necessarily change with every HP-UX release. CORE_FORMAT can thus be

easily used by core-reading tools to determine whether they are compatible with

a given core image. This type is expressed by a four-byte binary integer.

CORE_KERNEL The null-terminated version string associated with the kernel at the time the

core image was generated.

CORE_PROC An architecture-dependent data structure containing per-process information

such as hardware register contents. See the declaration of the proc_info

structure in <sys/core.h>.

CORE_STACK Process stack contents at the time the core image was created.

Objects dumped in a

core image ﬁle are not arranged in any particular order. Use corehead infor-

mation to determine the type of the object that immediately follows it.

Summary of content (2 pages)

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core(4) core(4) NAME core - format of core image file DESCRIPTION The HP-UX system writes out a file containing a core image of a terminated process when certain signals are received (see signal (5) for the list of reasons). The most common causes are memory violations, illegal instructions, floating point exceptions, bus errors, and user-generated quit signals. The core image file is called core and is written in the process’s working directory (provided it is allowed by normal access controls).
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(Notes) A (Notes) cA 2 Hewlett-Packard Company −1− HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010