A quick one (I wish :-) ...

My /usr/sbin/named cored just now.  It left a decent sized file
(1675540) in /etc/named.visgen.  But when I ran gdb on it, gdb
simply said:

"/etc/named.visgen/named.core" is not a core dump: File format not recognized

Sure enough, the file starts with a lot of zeroes.

  0000000   \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0
  *
  0000060   \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0 004 206 001   H  \0  \0  \0  \0
  0000100  254  \0  \0  \0 001  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0 300 321   G  \0

I ran strings on it which revealed that it was part of a core from
named; full of domain names and other DNS stuff.

Now why would the kernel generate a non-corefile called "thingy.core"?
Anti-social at best.

-bmw