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CORE(5)                     BSD File Formats Manual                    CORE(5)

NAME
     core -- memory image file format

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/param.h>

DESCRIPTION
     A small number of signals which cause abnormal termination of a process also cause a record of the
     process's in-core state to be written to disk for later examination by one of the available debuggers.
     (See sigaction(2).)  This memory image is written to a file named by default core.pid, where pid is the
     process ID of the process, in the /cores directory, provided the terminated process had write permis-sion permission
     sion in the directory, and the directory existed.

     The maximum size of a core file is limited by setrlimit(2).  Files which would be larger than the limit
     are not created.

     The core file consists of the Mach-O(5) header as  described in the <mach-o/loader.h> file.  The
     remainder of the core file consists of various sections described in the Mach-O(5) header.

NOTE
     Core dumps are disabled by default under Darwin/Mac OS X.  To re-enable core dumps, a privileged user
     must edit /etc/hostconfig to contain the line:

     COREDUMPS=-YES-SEE COREDUMPS=-YESSEE

SEE ALSO
     gdb(1), setrlimit(2), sigaction(2), Mach-O(5), sysctl(8)

HISTORY
     A core file format appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

BSD                             March 18, 2002                             BSD