Per-process core dump directory

[Richard Fearn]

Hi all,

Yesterday I was looking at where core dumps are saved when Java
processes crash (on Linux).

I know that the location of core dumps is set via the
kernel.core_pattern kernel parameter, and can be seen in
/proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern. This is a global setting, however, that
applies to any process that crashes.

Apache httpd has a CoreDumpDirectory directive [1] that allows the
directory to be specified; Apache installs signal handlers [2] so that
the current directory is changed before the dump is written.

Has anything similar ever been considered for the JVM? I had a quick
look in the bug database, but apart from lots of reports of core dumps
happening, I couldn't see anything about changing the location where
they are stored. Are there any existing bugs about this?

Regards,

Rich

[1] http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mpm_common.html#coredumpdirectory

[2] http://stackoverflow.com/a/2698415/200609

-- 
Richard Fearn
richardfearn at gmail.com