[Samba] Can one set limits on new core dump?

[James Peach]

On Mon, 15 May 2006 09:40 pm, Doug VanLeuven wrote:
> James Peach wrote:
> > On Sat, 13 May 2006 12:16 am, Gerald (Jerry) Carter wrote:
> >> James,
> >>
> >> This was your change right ?
> > 
> > Yup. It's deliberately not configurable so that we can always get
> > *something* that might help with fault diagnosis.
> > 
> 
> Is there a chance for some kind of compromise?

Of course.

> winbindd cranked out hundreds of core dumps in less time than
> it took to get a cup of coffee.

Do you have some core-naming facility that renames the core files
something other than "core"? I'm trying to understand why you ended up
with more that one core file ....

> My vmware machines all died for lack of temporary file space.
> Ultimately, it required a reboot to get back to normal
> because a lot of daemons require var space.
> 
> If it's repeatable, the common process is to re-enable core
> dumps and run a monitored test.

Unfortunately not all  problems are easily repeatable, and not all
sites have people with the time and expertise to be able to do this
sort of testing.

> Barring a compromise, I'll have to investigate and probably
> recommend hard limits be inherited in the startup files.
> Otherwise, run the risk of having samba take down the entire
> machine for the benefit of the developers on a Murphey.
> The way I've done it for 30 years is limit core dumps for
> normal day to day, re-enable it during problem determination.

I could certainly add a "enable core files" knob to smb.conf. I'd prefer
it to be on by default.

-- 
James Peach | jpeach at sgi.com | SGI Australian Software Group
I don't speak for SGI.