RFR (S): 8007779: os::die() on solaris should generate core file

[David Holmes]

My other email hasn't turned up yet but I was confusing this with the 
change that added the dump_core flag to os::abort.

It's only by "accident" that we use ::abort on linux - _exit didn't work 
back in the old days of LinuxThreads :)

This seems like a simple and potentially useful change, but I have a 
feeling it may have some unexpected consequences somewhere. :)

Actually one possible consequence - what return code will the process 
issue if it now hits this? Could this impact testing and failure matching ?

David

On 8/02/2013 10:24 PM, Staffan Larsen wrote:
> This is a request for review of a small change to the crash reporting on solaris.
>
> When hotspot crashes during the writing of the hs_err file, we call os::die(). On linux and bsd this causes a core file to be written (by calling ::abort()). This is good since we then have some record of what went wrong. On solaris, we call _exit() and no core file is created.
>
> There are two cases during the hs_err writing where we call os::die(). First, if the writing hangs, the WatcherThread will call os::die(). Second, if we get too many errors during the writing we will call os::die(). In both these cases it would be very helpful to have a core file. Otherwise all you have to go on is something like this:
>
> # A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
> #
> # SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xffffffff653848c0, pid=11823, tid=240
> #
> # JRE version: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (7.0_12-b11)
> # Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (24.0-b24 mixed mode solaris-sparc compressed oops)
> # Problematic frame:
> # C [libc.so.1+0x848c0]# [ timer expired, abort... ]
>
> Below is the change I would like to do.
>
> Thanks,
> /Staffan
>
>
> diff --git a/src/os/solaris/vm/os_solaris.cpp b/src/os/solaris/vm/os_solaris.cpp
> --- a/src/os/solaris/vm/os_solaris.cpp
> +++ b/src/os/solaris/vm/os_solaris.cpp
> @@ -1865,7 +1865,7 @@
>
>   // Die immediately, no exit hook, no abort hook, no cleanup.
>   void os::die() {
> -  _exit(-1);
> +  ::abort(); // dump core (for debugging)
>   }
>
>