How to limit the size of core dump file when generating it using GDB

linux gdb arm embedded-linux coredump
manav m-n picture manav m-n · Oct 12, 2011 · Viewed 20.8k times · Source

I am running an embedded application on ARM9 board, where total flash size is 180MB only. I am able to run gdb, but when I do

(gdb) generate-core-dump

I get an error

warning: Memory read failed for corefile section, 1048576 bytes at 0x4156c000.
warning: Memory read failed for corefile section, 1048576 bytes at 0x50c00000.
Saved corefile core.5546
The program is running.  Quit anyway (and detach it)? (y or n) [answered Y; input not from terminal]
Tamper Detected
**********OUTSIDE ifelse 0*********
length validation is failed

I also set ulimit -c 50000 but still the core dump exceeds this limit. When I do ls -l to check file size it is over 300 MB. In this case how should I limit the size of core dump?

Answer

Employed Russian picture Employed Russian · Oct 12, 2011

GDB does not respect 'ulimit -c', only the kernel does.

It's not clear whether you run GDB on target board, or on a development host (and using gdbserver on target). You probably should use the latter, which will allow you to collect full core dump.

Truncated core dumps are a pain anyway, as often they will not contain exactly the info you need to debug the problem.

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