Re: [PATCH v2] coredump: add %i/%I in core_pattern to report the tid of the crashed thread

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Tue Sep 23 2014 - 19:05:56 EST


On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:15:25 +0200 Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> format_corename() can only pass the leader's pid to the core handler, but
> there is no simple way to figure out which thread originated the coredump.
>
> As Jan explains, this also means that there is no simple way to create the
> backtrace of the crashed process:
>
> As programs are mostly compiled with implicit gcc -fomit-frame-pointer one
> needs program's .eh_frame section (equivalently PT_GNU_EH_FRAME segment) or
> .debug_frame section. .debug_frame usually is present only in separate debug
> info files usually not even installed on the system. While .eh_frame is a
> part of the executable/library (and it is even always mapped for C++
> exceptions unwinding) it no longer has to be present anywhere on the disk
> as the program could be upgraded in the meantime and the running instance
> has its executable file already unlinked from disk.
>
> One possibility is to echo 0x3f >/proc/*/coredump_filter and dump all the
> file-backed memory including the executable's .eh_frame section. But that
> can create huge core files, for example even due to mmapped data files.
>
> Other possibility would be to read .eh_frame from /proc/PID/mem at the
> core_pattern handler time of the core dump. For the backtrace one needs to
> read the register state first which can be done from core_pattern handler:
>
> ptrace(PTRACE_SEIZE, tid, 0, PTRACE_O_TRACEEXIT)
> close(0); // close pipe fd to resume the sleeping dumper
> waitpid(); // should report EXIT
> PTRACE_GETREGS or other requests
>
> The remaining problem is how to get the 'tid' value of the crashed thread.
> It could be read from the first NT_PRSTATUS note of the core file but that
> makes the core_pattern handler complicated.
>
> Unfortunately %t is already used so this patch uses %i/%I.

Is any userspace actually going to use this? If so, details?

Am wondering what is driving this change...

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