Examining Local Process Core Files

You can use Prism to examine a core file created for a message-passing program. To do this, specify the core file name on the command line, after the name of the executable program. For example,

% prism a.out corefile

When Prism comes up, you can issue commands like where and print to inspect the state of your process at the time the core dump was taken. But note these restrictions:

• You actually start scalar Prism rather than MP Prism, since there is only one core file. Thus, you cannot use process sets (psets) or other features of MP Prism.

• You cannot issue any execution commands (for example, run, cont, or step).

• You cannot change the values of variables via the assign command.

• You cannot use the core command to examine a core file once you have started MP Prism. If multiple processes dumped core, the resulting core file may be overwritten, and therefore invalid.