Re: generating postgres core files on debian

On Thu, 2002-09-19 at 11:18, Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to debug a problem involving DBD::PgSPI that crashes the
> backend. It used to work fine util we installed perl-5.8. How can I get
> a core file of a crashed backend on a debian-linux (unstable) machine?
>
> My /etc/security/limits.conf is empty. When I login as root "ulimit -c"
> shows a limit of 0. If I set the limit to "unlimited" and logout/login
> the limit is back to 0.

I think /etc/security/limits.conf is used to limit what you can set with
ulimit rather than dictate the settings. You probably need to put
"ulimit -c unlimited" in ~postgres/.bash_profile.

> Is it sufficient to set the proper limit and then restart postgres in
> the same shell to obtain core files in case the backend crashes?

Yes.

The core file produced by postmaster from the binary package will not be
very useful to you, because the binary is stripped. You need to build
the package from source and use the binary from the source tree
(.../src/backend/postmaster/postmaster), not the one copied into the
package tree (.../debian/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/postmaster) since the
stripping is done on the package tree after the binaries are installed
there.

To build the package:

cd /usr/local/src
apt-get source postgresql # installs in postgresql-7.2.2
apt-get build-dep postgresql # build dependencies
apt-get install devscripts fakeroot # needed for building anything
cd postgresql-7.2.2
debuild

--
Oliver Elphick Oliver(dot)Elphick(at)lfix(dot)co(dot)uk
Isle of Wight, UK
http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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