[ovs-discuss] looking for a good explanation of core dumps and backtraces

[邓尧]

IMHO, coredumps are for developers only, not even suitable for ops,
asking users for a coredump is really too much. If you want to deep
analyze a coredump, not only the coredump itself but also the system
shared libraries are also needed, most users have don't have the
skills to do this.

If you only need the backtrace (most of the time this is the
situation), you can generate one yourself, there is a library in GCC's
code base called libbacktrace (developed by google, released under BSD
licence) which could generate nice backtrace as long as debug symbols
aren't stripped.

libbacktrace is part of GCC, so you need to dig it from GCC's code
base and integrate it into OVS's code base. I have done this before
for my employer's project, because of company policies I cannot
release the final code, sorry.

If the full coredump is needed, you may want to try breakpad
https://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad, I have used it in a hobby
project, no production system experience though.

Thanks
Deng Yao

On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 3:12 AM, Ben Pfaff <blp at nicira.com> wrote:
> Occasionally (as today) I find myself asking a user to get a core dump
> and a backtrace, and find that the user doesn't have any of the skills
> or knowledge to do that.  Does anyone know of a good document that
> walks a user through how to do this (not necessarily OVS-specific)?  I
> don't want to hand-hold but I do want to help.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben.
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