Synopsis

generate_dump [OPTION…] PID

Description

Generates a minidump file containing a snapshot of a running process whose process identifier is PID. By default, the target process will be suspended while the minidump is generated, and the minidump file will be written to minidump.PID. After the minidump file is generated, the target process resumes running.

The minidump file will contain information about the process, its threads, its modules, and the system. It will not contain any exception information because it will be generated from a live running process, not as a result of an exception occurring.

This program uses task_for_pid() to access the process’ task port. This operation may be restricted to use by the superuser, executables signed by an authority trusted by the system, and processes otherwise permitted by taskgated(8). Consequently, this program must normally either be signed or be invoked by root. It is possible to install this program as a setuid root executable to overcome this limitation.

This program is similar to the gcore(1) program available on some operating systems.

Options

-r, --no-suspend

The target process will continue running while the minidump file is generated. Normally, the target process is suspended during this operation, which guarantees that the minidump file will contain an atomic snapshot of the process.

This option may be useful when attempting to generate a minidump from a process that dump generation has an interprocess dependency on, such as a system server like launchd(8) or opendirectoryd(8). Deadlock could occur if any portion of the dump generation operation blocks while waiting for a response from one of these servers while they are suspended.

-o, --output=FILE

The minidump will be written to FILE instead of minidump.PID.

--help

Display help and exit.

--version

Output version information and exit.

Examples

Generate a minidump file in /tmp/minidump containing a snapshot of the process with PID 1234.

$ generate_dump --output=/tmp/minidump 1234

Exit Status

0

Success.

1

Failure, with a message printed to the standard error stream.

See Also

catch_exception_tool(1)

Resources

Crashpad home page: https://crashpad.chromium.org/.

Report bugs at https://crashpad.chromium.org/bug/new.

Copyright

Copyright 2016 The Crashpad Authors.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.