Python server "Aborted (Core dumped)"

python c web.py linear-programming coredump
Arnaud picture Arnaud · Jun 6, 2016 · Viewed 7.9k times · Source

I use web.py to create a Python web server. This server is called to solve linear programming problems, and it uses the library CBC to do that.

Every once in a while, the server crashes with a log that looks like that:

78.243.184.3:56271 - - [03/Jun/2016 04:35:54] "HTTP/1.1 GET /optimization" - 200 OK
Aborted (core dumped)

I belive "Aborted (core dumped)" is a C error, so it comes from either web.py or CBC.

Is there any way to trace back the source of the error?

Answer

Peter Brittain picture Peter Brittain · Jun 8, 2016

A core dump is caused by a fault in the native code in your web server. Python is pretty darn solid these days, so such faults are almost always caused by bugs in C extensions in my experience.

You therefore have 3 problems.

  1. You need to find the core dump file. This is usually in the current working directory of the process that dumped. However, there are configation options that can change this.

  2. You need to debug the call stack of what has failed. That is covered in StackOverflow - see How to analyze a program's core dump file with gdb?

  3. You might need to relate the Python interpreter stack back to the Python code that you were running. To do this you will need to install the Python debug symbols and Python extensions for gdb. The Python wiki has good advice on how to do that here.

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