Recent Windows versions also write a minidump ( similar in principle to a core dump ) describing the state of the crashed process.
12.
In the absence of an interactive debugger, the core dump may be used by an assiduous programmer to determine the error from direct examination.
13.
However, over the duration of a mission the core dump subsystem may be substantially modified or enhanced for the specific needs of the mission.
14.
Features include : the ability to disable ELF core dumps, reduce the number of swap files, use of the SLOB memory allocator, ability to disable BUG ( ).
15.
On shared computers, whether time-sharing, batch processing, or server systems, core dumps allow off-line debugging of the operating system, so that the system can go back into operation immediately.
16.
Core dumps can be used to capture data freed during dynamic memory allocation and may thus be used to retrieve information from a program that is no longer running.
17.
In older and simpler operating systems, each process had a contiguous address-space, so a core dump file was simply a binary file with the sequence of bytes or words.
18.
Some operating systems such as early versions of Unix did not support attaching debuggers to running processes, so core dumps were necessary to run a debugger on a process's memory contents.
19.
UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems report these conditions to the user with error messages such as " segmentation violation ", or " bus error ", and may also produce a core dump.
20.
Giving people a " core dump " on an esoteric topic like building a theremin ( an obscure electronic instrument ) from scratch is the Silicon Valley equivalent of playing 18 holes.
