> [on a side debugging note:  We really need to have the mem-dump
> capable of dumping only active memory out to disk, preferably
> pre-compressed.  I think it ludicrous to have to dedicate 640MB of
> disk to a dump device on a machine with 640MB of RAM -- that's over a
> half gig of space that I could put to better use.

If you care that little about debugging, why bother with dumps at all?

> This is not even to bring up those machines capable of holding 2G of
> RAM.  What, I'm supposed to dedicate what is now, amazingly enough, a
> "small disk" just to hold a memory dump?]

If you have that much RAM, I don't consider it unreasonable.

If this is done - dumping only "active" pages, for some value of
"active" - please make sure it's optional.  I do not consider it
acceptable to be unable to track down some bug just because the
relevant page happened to be one the core-dump code considered free at
the time.

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