core-dump support exists now

David Mosberger-Tang (davidm@AZStarNet.com)
Tue, 10 Oct 1995 08:01:46 -0700

OK, seems like Linus just put out 1.3.33 (thanks, Linus!). And it
contains the necessary bits to produce usable core-dumps. After
building a 1.3.33 kernel, you'll need an updated gdb to make sense of
the core dumps. A new gdb binary is available at:

ftp://ftp.azstarnet.com/pub/linux/axp/misc/axpbin-gdb.tar.gz

The gdb sources did *not* change. The only change was to BFD so that
it uses the trad_core format rather than osf_core format. I'll upload
a source patch RSN (ping me if you want it and I happen to forget).
The reason didn't have to change is because the CPU registers in
"struct user" are saved in the same order as in an OSF/1 core dump.
But that's about the only similarity between an OSF/1 core dump and a
Linux/Alpha core dump, so don't expect core dump compatibility between
the two OSes...

One more thing: reg.h moved from /usr/include/alpha to
/usr/src/linux/include/asm-alpha as the core-dump format depends on
that file. You may want to updated your include directory
accordingly.

Oh, and you should now be able to do "gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore" and
read out the "jiffies" counter, for example... :)

--david

PS: I have not yet tried to build a 1.3.33 kernel.