UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

This works for all my normal executions. But on one machine, a coredump is expected on one command. We don't care and know it will always happen, but need to confirm the version info from the start of the output. This is output from the exe:

$ ./Up


-*-*- XXXXXXX UPDATE XXXXX Version nnnnnnnn -*-*-
-*-*- Copyright (C) 1998-2007 xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Inc. -*-*-

Processing begins: 10/4/2007 10:48:12

Tracking Database Connect Error
Memory fault(coredump)

However, when I send the output to a file, the output file is empty:

$ ./Up > ../Up_output.txt 2>&1
Memory fault(coredump)
$ cd ..
$ cat Up_output.txt
$

How do I capture the output so I can check the version and continue processing?

surprising, why the redirection is not working here ?

I could see that you have used 2>&1 and both stdout and stderr to be redirected to the log file

Yeah - really weird the redirection not working.
Perhaps a dodgy binary ??
Maybe it's me, but I'd not be too happy with a program that generates a coredump each time you run it.

[speculating]
Seems like it rely's on a database connection, or is there a flag/config you could alter to turn the reliance off ??
[/speculating]

This comes from another group, so I'll have to ask about that.

The core file has program version info as well.

Code:

file /path/to/core

will verify you are looking at the correct core file.

And. No way should an app 'be expected' to dump core in production. If someone has deliberately written code that forces itself to core dump for debug reasons, okay. But that's development. Never production.

This is development. I'm in QA.

Thanks. I'll try looking at that file.

Why is that so Jim ?

Did you mean an app running in production to be cent percent perfect all the time ? I accept that bugs that dump core in production are not a welcoming feature.

But I believe neither of the code that is written could be ever said 100% bug free, so core dumps in production are more like a way of life and they are bound to happen.

I didn't mean to say anything negatively and only point I would like to stress is " it happens " ( I know its a lame excuse and hate that myself very much )