TLS info and core files?

TLS info and core files?

[Tom Horsley]

As a debugger developer, I find it quite handy when debugging
a real process to use the PTRACE_GET_THREAD_AREA or
PTRACE_GET_ARCH_PRCTL calls to dig up pthread IDs without
having to know too much about the internals of the pthread
library. (It would be even handier if the info was more
consistent across architectures :-).

In a core file, that information has all disappeared.

Should core files have NOTE entries added for some sort of
thread local storage info to be recorded? (Whatever the
kernel happens to know that won't be accessible anymore
after the process is gone, which would probably vary
from architecture to architecture.)

Re: TLS info and core files?

[Andi Kleen]

Tom Horsley <tom.horsley@ccur.com> writes:
> 
> Should core files have NOTE entries added for some sort of
> thread local storage info to be recorded? (Whatever the
> kernel happens to know that won't be accessible anymore
> after the process is gone, which would probably vary
> from architecture to architecture.)

I think that would be a good idea. Shouldn't be very hard 
to implement. Please send a patch.

We also miss some other information in core files 
I found useful in the past, like the CR3 and some other registers. 
The printks on x86-64 actually give more information 
than a core dump in some cases.

-Andi