nspluginwrapper(-devel) and core dumps

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:12:22 +0200 (CEST)
> From: Barbara <barbara.xxx1975 at libero.it>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-emulation at freebsd.org
> 
> 
> I have a question about nspluginwrapper and linux-f10-flashplugin10:
> is it possible to rebuild nspluginwrapper so it doesn't dump core files 
> (npviewer.bin.core)?
> Is it possible to have it dying "silently"?
> 
> The main reason it that when it starts dumping core, the whole browser freezes 
> until the file it's completely written.
> In case of heavy disk I/O, e.g. upgrading some ports or world, it can take a 
> lot of time.
> 
> The other reason is that those files are really huge. I often get 300mb to 1.2
> gb core file when I have a discrete number of tab opened.
> And I don't even play flash-games. And I have flashblock installed. I just 
> watch at some videos on youtube or similar.
> I know that I could limit the size of coredumps, but this could prevent me 
> getting backtrace from other sw.
> I'm fearing that the extra stress on hd could hurt it.
> But please tell me if they are still useful for debugging, despite being linux 
> binaries.
> 
> I was thinking about contacting the author to ask him.
> But the site reported in pkg-descr (http://gwenole.beauchesne.
> info/projects/nspluginwrapper/) in not reachable for me.
> And the last news on freshmeat is dated "02 Jan 2009".
> Does anyone know what happened to him? And what about his project?
> 
> For what I can understand npviewer.bin and a couple of .so should be rebuilt 
> on Fedora 10 i386.
> If that's a problem, I have a VM with F10. Can this help?
> Could someone suggest me the magic to rebuild the linux part of the port?

Barbara,

While I don't know of any way to make an executable not dump core when
it crashes, you can tell you shell to not do so. For tcsh (FreeBSD
default), "limit coredumpsize 0" should do the trick. Of course, no core
files will be dumped for any executable that crashes, but this may be
just what you want for the default. Similar commands are available for
other shells. 

BTW, If you have an F10 VM, you might find it VERY popular if you can
build a current Linux pango. There is a security vulnerability in the
last F10 RPM of this, so having a patched RPM for it would be nice.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751