systemd Developer Lennart Poettering lennart@poettering.net systemd-coredump 8 systemd-coredump systemd-coredump.socket systemd-coredump@.service Acquire, save and process core dumps /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-coredump systemd-coredump@.service systemd-coredump.socket systemd-coredump is a system service that can acquire core dumps from the kernel and handle them in various ways. Core dumps can be written to the journal or saved as a file. Once saved they can be retrieved for further processing, for example in gdb1. By default, systemd-coredump will log the core dump including a backtrace if possible to the journal and store the core dump itself in an external file in /var/lib/systemd/coredump. When the kernel invokes systemd-coredump to handle a core dump, it will connect to the socket created by the systemd-coredump.socket unit, which in turn will spawn a systemd-coredump@.service instance to process the core dump. Hence systemd-coredump.socket and systemd-coredump@.service are helper units which do the actual processing of core dumps and are subject to normal service management. The behavior of a specific program upon reception of a signal is governed by a few factors which are described in detail in core5. In particular, the core dump will only be processed when the related resource limits are sufficient. For programs started by systemd process resource limits can be set by directive LimitCore=, see systemd.exec5. In order to be used systemd-coredump must be configured in sysctl8 parameter kernel.core_pattern. The syntax of this parameter is explained in core5. Systemd installs the file /usr/lib/sysctl.d/50-coredump.conf which configures kernel.core_pattern accordingly. This file may be masked or overridden to use a different setting following normal sysctl.d5 rules. If the sysctl configuration is modified, it must be updated in the kernel before it takes effect, see sysctl8 and systemd-sysctl8. The behavior of systemd-coredump itself is configured through the configuration file /etc/systemd/coredump.conf and corresponding snippets /etc/systemd/coredump.conf.d/*.conf, see coredump.conf5. A new instance of systemd-coredump is invoked upon receiving every core dump. Therefore, changes in these files will take effect the next time a core dump is received. Resources used by core dump files are restricted in two ways. Parameters like maximum size of acquired core dumps and files can be set in files /etc/systemd/coredump.conf and snippets mentioned above. In addition the storage time of core dump files is restricted by systemd-tmpfiles, corresponding settings are by default in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf. Data stored in the journal can be viewed with journalctl1 as usual. coredumpctl1 can be used to retrieve saved core dumps independent of their location, to display information and to process them e.g. by passing to the GNU debugger (gdb). coredump.conf5, coredumpctl1, systemd-journald.service8, systemd-tmpfiles8, core5, sysctl.d5, systemd-sysctl.service8.