systemd/docs/COREDUMP.md

title	category	layout	SPDX-License-Identifier
systemd Coredump Handling	Concepts	default	LGPL-2.1-or-later

systemd Coredump Handling

Support in the Service Manager (PID 1)

The systemd service manager natively provides coredump handling functionality, as implemented by the Linux kernel. Specifically, PID 1 provides the following functionality:

1. During very early boot it will raise the LIMIT_CORE resource limit for itself to infinity (and thus implicitly also all its children). This removes any limits on the size of generated coredumps, for all invoked processes, from earliest boot on. (The Linux kernel sets the limit to 0 by default.)

2. At the same time it will turn off coredump handling in the kernel by writing |/bin/false into /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern (also known as the "kernel.core_pattern sysctl"; see core(5) for details). This means that coredumps are not actually processed. (The Linux kernel sets the pattern to core by default, so that coredumps are written to the current working directory of the crashing process.)

Net effect: after PID1 has started and performed this setup coredumps are disabled, but by means of the kernel.core_pattern sysctl rather than by size limit. This is generally preferable, since the pattern can be updated trivially at the right time to enable coredumping once the system is ready, taking comprehensive effect on all userspace. (Or to say this differently: disabling coredumps via the size limit is problematic, since it cannot easily be undone without iterating through all already running processes once the system is ready for coredump handling.)

Processing of core dumps may be enabled at the appropriate time by updating the kernel.core_pattern sysctl. Only coredumps that happen later will be processed.

During the final shutdown phase the kernel.core_pattern sysctl is updated again to |/bin/false, disabling coredump support again, should it have been enabled in the meantime.

This means coredump handling is generally not available during earliest boot and latest shutdown, reflecting the fact that storage is typically not available in these environments, and many other facilities are missing too that are required to collect and process a coredump successfully.

systemd-coredump Handler

The systemd suite provides a coredump handler systemd-coredump which can be enabled at build-time. It is activated during boot via the /usr/lib/sysctl.d/50-coredump.conf drop-in file for systemd-sysctl.service. It registers the systemd-coredump tool as kernel.core_pattern sysctl.

systemd-coredump is implemented as socket activated service: when the kernel invokes the userspace coredump handler, the received coredump file descriptor is immediately handed off to the socket activated service systemd-coredump@.service via the systemd-coredump.socket socket unit. This means the coredump handler runs for a very short time only, and the potentially heavy and security sensitive coredump processing work is done as part of the specified service unit, and thus can take benefit of regular service resource management and sandboxing.

The systemd-coredump handler will extract a backtrace and ELF packaging metadata from any coredumps it receives and log both. The information about coredumps stored in the journal can be enumerated and queried with the coredumpctl tool, for example for directly invoking a debugger such as gdb on a collected coredump.

The handler writes coredump files to /var/lib/systemd/coredump/. Old files are cleaned up periodically by systemd-tmpfiles(8).

User Experience

With the above, any coredumps generated on the system are by default collected and turned into logged events — except during very early boot and late shutdown. Individual services, processes or users can opt-out of coredump collection, by setting LIMIT_CORE to 0 (or alternatively invoke PR_SET_DUMPABLE). The resource limit can be set freely by daemons/processes/users to arbitrary values, which the coredump handler will respect. The coredumpctl tool may be used to further analyze/debug coredumps.

Alternative Coredump Handlers

While we recommend usage of the systemd-coredump handler, it's fully supported to use alternative coredump handlers instead. A similar implementation pattern is recommended. Specifically:

1. Use a sysctl.d/ drop-in to register your handler with the kernel. Make sure to include the %c specifier in the pattern (which reflects the crashing process' RLIMIT_CORE) and act on it: limit the stored coredump file to the specified limit.

2. Do not do heavy processing directly in the coredump handler. Instead, quickly pass off the kernel's coredump file descriptor to an auxiliary service running as service under the service manager, so that it can be done under supervision, sandboxing and resource management.

Note that at any given time only a single handler can be enabled, i.e. the kernel.core_pattern sysctl cannot reference multiple executables.

Packaging

It might make sense to split systemd-coredump into a separate distribution package. If doing so, make sure that /usr/lib/sysctl.d/50-coredump.conf and the associated service and socket units are also added to the split off package.

Note that in a scenario where systemd-coredump is split out and not installed, coredumping is turned off during the entire runtime of the system — unless an alternative handler is installed, or behaviour is manually reverted to legacy style handling (see below).

Restoring Legacy Coredump Handling

The default policy of the kernel to write coredumps into the current working directory of the crashing process is considered highly problematic by many, including by the systemd maintainers. Nonetheless, if users locally want to return to this behaviour, two changes must be made (followed by a reboot):

$ mkdir -p /etc/sysctl.d
$ cat >/etc/sysctl.d/50-coredump.conf <<EOF
# Party like it's 1995!
kernel.core_pattern=core
EOF

and

$ mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system.conf.d
$ cat >/etc/systemd/system.conf.d/50-coredump.conf <<EOF
[Manager]
DefaultLimitCORE=0:infinity
EOF