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SAVECORE(8)            DragonFly System Manager's Manual           SAVECORE(8)

NAME

savecore -- save a core dump of the operating system

SYNOPSIS

savecore -c savecore -C [-v] [directory device] savecore [-fkvz] [directory [device ...]]

DESCRIPTION

The savecore utility copies the currently running kernel and its associ- ated core dump into directory, or the current working directory if no directory argument is given, and enters a reboot message and information about the core dump into the system log. The options are as follows: -C Check to see if a dump exists, and display a brief message to indicate the status. An exit status of 0 indicates that a dump is there, 1 indicates that none exists. This option is compati- ble only with the [-v] option. -c Clear the dump, so that future invocations of savecore will ignore it. -f Force a dump to be taken even if either the dump was cleared or if the dump header information is inconsistent. -k Do not clear the dump after saving it. -v Print out some additional debugging information. -z Compress the core dump and kernel (see gzip(1)). The savecore utility looks for dumps on each device specified by the device argument(s), or on each device in /etc/fstab marked as ``dump'' or ``swap''. The savecore utility checks the core dump in various ways to make sure that it is complete. If it passes these checks, it saves the core image in directory/vmcore.# and the system in directory/kernel.# and information about the core in directory/info.# The ``#'' is the number from the first line of the file directory/bounds, and it is incremented and stored back into the file each time savecore successfully runs. The savecore utility also checks the available disk space before attempt- ing to make the copies. If there is insufficient disk space in the filesystem containing directory, or if the file directory/minfree exists and the number of free kilobytes (for non-superusers) in the filesystem after the copies were made would be less than the number in the first line of this file, the copies are not attempted. If savecore successfully copies the kernel and the core dump, the core dump is cleared so that future invocations of savecore will ignore it. The savecore utility is meant to be called near the end of the initial- ization file /etc/rc (see rc(8)).

SEE ALSO

gzip(1), getbootfile(3), dumpon(8), loader(8), syslogd(8)

HISTORY

The savecore utility appeared in 4.1BSD.

BUGS

The minfree code does not consider the effect of compression or sparse files. DragonFly 3.5 December 15, 2009 DragonFly 3.5

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