Subject: Savecore Complexity Questions
To: None <tech-userlevel@NetBSD.org, tech-kern@NetBSD.org>
From: Devon H. O'Dell <devon.odell@coyotepoint.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 12/10/2007 12:05:50
Hey guys,

After getting the initial minidump, I started working on modifying 
savecore / libkvm to store it to disk. I'm kind of at a point where I 
feel like this isn't the right solution and am questioning savecore's 
current complexity. For instance, it seems like it will refuse to save a 
core if the kernel that cored does not match the currently running 
kernel, and it relies on libkvm for reading the core header, the core 
itself, and writing it to the disk.

This seems to be needlessly complex. I don't understand why savecore 
shouldn't just open the configured dump partition, poke around for the 
core magic, and just write what it finds to disk. (So this is what I'm 
planning on implementing and have actually begun work on).

Does anybody have other / better suggestions about this (or information 
on why savecore has all this -- what seems to me to be needless -- 
complexity)?

Thanks,

--dho