From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 23 23:15:07 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 312891065673 for ; Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:15:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from a_best01@uni-muenster.de) Received: from zivm-out2.uni-muenster.de (ZIVM-OUT2.UNI-MUENSTER.DE [128.176.192.9]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BD15F8FC1C for ; Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:15:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from a_best01@uni-muenster.de) X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.43,259,1246831200"; d="scan'208";a="219527205" Received: from zivmaildisp2.uni-muenster.de (HELO ZIVMAILUSER03.UNI-MUENSTER.DE) ([128.176.188.143]) by zivm-relay2.uni-muenster.de with ESMTP; 24 Jul 2009 01:15:05 +0200 Received: by ZIVMAILUSER03.UNI-MUENSTER.DE (Postfix, from userid 149459) id 2ACEB1B0751; Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:15:05 +0200 (CEST) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:15:04 +0200 (CEST) From: Alexander Best Sender: Organization: Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: core dumps being overwritten X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:15:07 -0000 i was thinking about this issue the other day again. if /var/crash/bounds gets corrupted vital crash/debug information could be lost (like in my case). why don't we check for existing core dumps instead of using bounds? doing something like in this pseudo code: i = 0; while(exist("vmcore."i) || exist("core.txt."i) || exist("info."i)) i++; write("vmcore."i); write(""core.txt."i); write("info."i); or how about using /dev/random to create unique filenames so core dumps never get overwritten? cheers.