gcore(1) BSD General Commands Manual gcore(1)
NAME
gcore -- get core images of running processes
SYNOPSIS
gcore [-s] [-v] [-b size] [-o path | -c pathformat] pid
DESCRIPTION
The gcore program creates a core file image of the process specified by
pid. The resulting core file can be used with a debugger, e.g. lldb(1),
to examine the state of the process.
The following options are available:
-s Suspend the process while the core file is captured.
-v Report progress on the dump as it proceeds.
-b size Limit the size of the core file to size MiBytes.
The following options control the name of the core file:
-o path
Write the core file to path.
-c pathformat
Write the core file to pathformat. The pathformat string is
treated as a pathname that may contain various special characters
which cause the interpolation of strings representing specific
attributes of the process into the name.
Each special character is introduced by the % character. The for-
mat characters and their meanings are:
N The name of the program being dumped, as reported by
ps(1).
U The uid of the process being dumped, converted to a
string.
P The pid of the process being dumped, converted to a
string.
T The time when the core file was taken, converted to ISO
8601 format.
% Output a percent character.
The default file name used by gcore is %N-%P-%T. By default, the core
file will be written to a directory whose name is determined from the
kern.corefile MIB. This can be printed or modified using sysctl(8).
The directory where the core file is to be written must be accessible to
the owner of the target process.
gcore will not overwrite an existing file, nor will it create missing
directories in the path.
EXIT_STATUS
The gcore utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
FILES
/cores/%N-%P-%T default pathname for the corefile.
BUGS
With the -b flag, gcore writes out as much data as it can up to the spec-
ified limit, even if that results in an incomplete core image. Such a
partial core dump may confuse subsequent programs that attempt to parse
the contents of such files.
SEE ALSO
lldb(1), core(5), Mach-O(5), sysctl(8), sudo(8).
Darwin February 4, 2017 Darwin
Mac OS X 10.12.3 - Generated Sat Feb 4 18:08:07 CST 2017