From: Gennady <gfb@...>
Date: 2004-07-24T03:37:41+09:00
Subject: [OT] Generating a core without termination

Hi, guys

The great thing about this list is that you can expect an answer to any 
reasonable technical question here. You are the best, guys.

Now the question ;-). Does anybody know how to generate a core file from 
within a process without terminating it on Linux or Solaris? I know that 
at any point I can call abort() and have the core, or send itself a 
signal that terminates a process with generating a core file. But it is 
not what I need, unfortunately.

I hold little hope for a positive answer as I am in Unix C/C++ 
development for around 15 years, however maybe I am missing something.

Here's the problem. In my C++ program I have an exception class, say, 
NoSuchElementException. It is being handled accordingly throughout the 
code, however there are some places where it sneaks through. I want to 
get an execution stack at the time when the exception is first created 
so that I can trace where it was thrown from (much like in Ruby where 
you can get #backtrace from an exception, Ruby rules :-) !!!) .

So I thought if I could generate a core file from 
NoSuchElementException's constructor and let it go on, I would be able 
to analyze the last core file and pin-point the place immediately (now I 
have to put more trace output to find it).

Thanks a lot,
Gennady.

P.S. I also tried to use gdb and specify command to be executed at a 
given breakpoint (like { backtrace, continue }). It works fine, however, 
executing a program from within gdb is not always an option in a 
production environment :-(, you often need to do post-mortem analysis.