How to stop core files in /

[Alan's Home for Wayward Notes File.]

In article <SPA.90Jun11125248 at hal.fctunl.rccn.pt>, spa at fctunl.rccn.pt (Salvador Pinto Abreu) writes:

   In response to In article <1650 at vela.acs.oakland.edu> 
	schemers at vela.acs.oakland.edu (Roland Schemers III):

	[ Using a 0 mode file to prevent core dumps ]
> 
> > Roland
> 
> I'm not sure this would work, as the X server runs as root. However,
> you may do something along the lines of:
> 
> 	% su
> 	# rm -f /core
> 	# ln -s /dev/null /core
> 
> Salvador Pinto Abreu	              BITNET/Internet: spa at fctunl.rccn.pt


	I tried the 0 mode /core on my DECstation and all it
	did was create a 20KB /core file.  As suspected by
	Salvador root can still write to it.  His suggestion
	of using a symbolic link to /dev/null did work as
	expected.  The program I used to experiment was:

		main()
		{
			abort() ;
		}

	The X11 server shouldn't ever crash and leave core dump.
	Probably what you should do is make a note of all the
	applications running, save the core dump to tape and
	submit an SPR.  You should be running the current version
	of UWS (V2.2 at the moment), but they may still accept
	SPRs on one of the previous versions.
-- 
Alan Rollow				alan at nabeth.enet.dec.com