On 23 Jan 2003, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> aridaman kaushik <kaushik_ari@postmark.net> writes:
> > Hi all,
> >     I have a doubt regarding core file. The binary file is always in
> > core format. One way to analyse the core file is using gdb. But with
> > Gdb, code should be compiled with -g option which takes huge memeory
> > for big modules.
> >
> > Is there any way to analyse the core dump file.
>
> What do you mean by "analyse". If you want to determine where the
> program crashed, you need to use a debugger, and you need symbol
> tables or else the debugger can't work.
>
> However, if, for example, you just wanted to know the length of the
> core file, or how many one bits there were in it, or what have you,
> I'm sure you could come up with another way.

You can get more than that out of a core file, even without a
debugger, and without symbol tables. "systat", "vmstat", "ps"
(probably others) all take "-M core" options, and that can help
an admin figure out what triggered the bug.

Frederick