[systemd-devel] Why are core dumps named vgcore.*?

[Mantas Mikulėnas]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 9:04 AM Ulrich Windl <
Ulrich.Windl at rz.uni-regensburg.de> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I'm developing a program that dumps core on some failed assertions. I
> noticed that the core dumps are created in the user directory as
> vgcore.<PID>.


This doesn't sound like a coredumpctl-managed core dump at all. In fact it
sounds like the dump was created in userspace by Valgrind. (Systemd-managed
core dumps would always go to /var/lib/systemd/coredump, not to the cwd.)


> Where does the name vgcore come from?
>

I used codesearch.debian.net to track it down to valgrind's m_coredump
component.


> And is it OK to remove just those files, or does coredumpctl store
> additional infos?
>

Most likely coredumpctl doesn't have *any* information about this dump,
since it didn't go through the kernel or systemd in the first place.

But in general, coredumpctl is fine with missing/removed coredump files --
that's part of the normal operation; actual dumps are cleaned out much
faster than the corresponding journal entries. You'll probably already see
some of them marked "missing" in the list.

-- 
Mantas Mikulėnas
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