Re: Core dumps & /proc/kcore
Martin Fluch <fluch@rock.helsinki.fi> writes:
>On Sat, 13 Nov 1999, David J. Kanter wrote:
>> I'm trying to free up some disk space so hunted for core dumps. All I could
>> find (find / -name "core" -xdev) was /proc/kcore, which is a whopping 131Mb.
>> Is this a monolithic core dump that can be deleted?
>The proc filesystem mounted on /proc (see fstab) is a virtual filesystem
>provided by the kernel. This 'file' resides nowhere on your hd, but is
>generated on the fly by the kernel (also I dont know more about this
>'file').
It contains the full contents of the computer's physical memory. This
basically means that if you try to read it, the kernel gives you a
part of the contents of memory.
Once upon a time, a type of memory hardware was called "core memory",
and the term stuck, so "core" basically means "memory" (and "core
dump" = "memory dump", but this is talking about the virtual memory of
one process). I don't know where the "k" in "kcore" comes from,
probably simply "kernel". (And "proc" comes from "processes", because
originally the /proc filesystem only contained information about
processes.)
--
-=- Rjs -=- rjs@lloke.dna.fi
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