magic disappearing coredumps

[Josh Carroll]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Horst Günther Burkhardt III
<horst at sxemacs.org> wrote:
> I'm trying to debug a piece of software. It dumps a core file which
> mysteriously vanishes. it's not in the program directory, nor my $HOME,
> nor /var/crash nor /var/core ...
>
> Deliberately crashing /bin/sh also results in a core file which turns up
> nowhere on my filesystem.
>
> Crossposting to -stable and -ppc because i'm uncertain whether this is a
> ppc issue or a bsd issue or simple operator incompetence.
>
> I apologise if the answer is something that was a google away.
>
> -- Horst
>

Have you limited the coredumpsize to 0 by chance? What output do you get from:

limits | grep core

or perhaps:

ulimit -a | grep core

Regards,
Josh