systemd Developer Lennart Poettering lennart@poettering.net systemd-coredump 8 systemd-coredump systemd-coredump.socket systemd-coredump@.service Log and store core dumps /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-coredump systemd-coredump@.service systemd-coredump.socket systemd-coredump can be used as a helper binary by the kernel when a user space program receives a fatal signal and dumps core. For it to be used in this capacity, it must be specified by the kernel.core_pattern sysctl8 setting. The syntax of this setting is explained in core5. Systemd installs /usr/lib/sysctl.d/50-coredump.conf which configures kernel.core_pattern to invoke systemd-coredump. This file may be masked or overridden to use a different setting following normal sysctl.d5 rules. The behavior of a specific program upon reception of a signal is governed by a few factors which are described in detail in core5. In particular, the coredump will only be processed when the related resource limits are high enough. For programs started by systemd, those may be set using LimitCore= (see systemd.exec5). The behaviour of systemd-coredump is configured through /etc/systemd/coredump.conf and other configuration files. See coredump.conf5 for details. By default, systemd-coredump will log the coredump including a backtrace if possible, and store the core (contents of process' memory contents) in an external file on disk in /var/lib/systemd/coredump. When the kernel invokes systemd-coredump to handle a coredump, it will connect to the socket created by the systemd-coredump.socket unit, which in turn will spawn a systemd-coredump@.service instance to process the coredump. Hence systemd-coredump.socket and systemd-coredump@.service are helper units which do the actual processing of coredumps and are subject to normal service management. The log entry and a backtrace are stored in the journal, and can be viewed with journalctl1. coredumpctl1 may be used to list and extract coredumps or load them in gdb1. The coredump helper is invoked anew each time. Therefore, any configuration changes will take effect on the invocation of systemd-coredump. If the sysctl configuration is modified, it must be updated in the kernel before it takes effect, see systemd-sysctl8 and sysctl8. coredump.conf5, coredumpctl1, systemd-journald.service8, core5, sysctl.d5, systemd-sysctl.service8.