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Troubleshooting System Administration Issues in Oracle® Solaris 11.4

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Updated: November 2020
 
 

About Process Failures and Core Files

When a process or an application terminates abnormally, the system automatically generates a set of files. This process is described as a core dump. The files that are created are core files. A core file is a disk copy of the contents of the process address space at the time of its termination, along with additional information about the state of the process. Typically, core files are produced following abnormal termination of a process resulting from a bug in the corresponding application. A core file provides invaluable information for you to use in diagnosing the problem that causes the process failure. For more information, see Parameters for Core File Creation.

As part of your ongoing system administration, you can use the coreadm command to control the creation specifications for core files. For example, you can use the coreadm command to configure a system so that all process core files are placed in a single system directory so you can track problems easily. For more information, see Administering Your Core File Specifications.

When a process terminates abnormally, you can inspect the core files that are created using a debugger such as mdb or by using a proc tool. For more information, see Examining Core Files After a Process Failure.