Recently an application forced the need to create and collect core dumps on RHEL6 systems. The below process will also work on any RHEL variants (CentOS, Scientific Linux).
Edit /etc/security/limits.conf, notice this is set to all processes but if you have a process running as a service account replace the * with the service account. You will have to restart the process for this change to go into effect.
# vi /etc/security/limits.conf #* soft core 0 * soft core unlimited
Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add where to put the core file and any naming standard.
# vi /etc/sysctl.conf kernel.core_pattern = /tmp/core-%e-%s-%u-%g-%p-%t fs.suid_dumpable = 2
Filename variables:
%e is the filename
%g is the gid the process was running under
%p is the pid of the process
%s is the signal that caused the dump
%t is the time the dump occurred
%u is the uid the process was running under
Edit the /etc/sysconfig/init and set a core file limit.
# vi /etc/sysconfig/init DAEMON_COREFILE_LIMIT=’unlimited’
Now let’s put the changes into play.
# sysctl -p
Next time there is a crash you will have a core file!
