ProcDump

ProcDump is a Linux reimagining of the classic ProcDump tool from the Sysinternals suite of tools for Windows. ProcDump provides a convenient way for Linux developers to create core dumps of their application based on performance triggers.

Installation & Usage

Requirements

• Minimum OS:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS 7
  • Fedora 29
  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• gdb >= 7.6.1
• zlib (build-time only)

Install ProcDump

Checkout our install instructions for distribution specific steps to install Procdump.

Build ProcDump from Scratch

To build from scratch you'll need to have a C compiler (supporting C11), zlib, and a make utility installed. Then simply run:

make
make install

Building Procdump Packages

The distribution packages for Procdump for Linux are constructed utilizing debbuild for Debian targets and rpmbuild for Fedora targets.

To build a deb package of Procdump on Ubuntu simply run:

make && make deb

To build a rpm package of Procdump on Fedora simply run:

make && make rpm

Usage

Usage: procdump [OPTIONS...] TARGET
   OPTIONS
      -h          Prints this help screen
      -C          Trigger core dump generation when CPU exceeds or equals specified value (0 to 100 * nCPU)
      -c          Trigger core dump generation when CPU is less than specified value (0 to 100 * nCPU)
      -M          Trigger core dump generation when memory commit exceeds or equals specified value (MB)
      -m          Trigger core dump generation when when memory commit is less than specified value (MB)
      -T          Trigger when thread count exceeds or equals specified value.
      -F          Trigger when file descriptor count exceeds or equals specified value.
      -G          Trigger when signal with the specified value (numeric) is sent (uses PTRACE and will affect performance of target process).      
      -I          Polling frequency in milliseconds (default is 1000)
      -n          Number of core dumps to write before exiting (default is 1)
      -s          Consecutive seconds before dump is written (default is 10)
      -o          Path and/or filename prefix where the core dump is written to
      -d          Writes diagnostic logs to syslog
   TARGET must be exactly one of these:
      -p          pid of the process
      -w          Name of the process executable

Examples

The following examples all target a process with pid == 1234

The following will create a core dump immediately.

sudo procdump -p 1234

The following will create 3 core dumps 10 seconds apart.

sudo procdump -n 3 -p 1234

The following will create 3 core dumps 5 seconds apart.

sudo procdump -n 3 -s 5 -p 1234

The following will create a core dump each time the process has CPU usage >= 65%, up to 3 times, with at least 10 seconds between each dump.

sudo procdump -C 65 -n 3 -p 1234

The following will create a core dump each time the process has CPU usage >= 65%, up to 3 times, with at least 5 seconds between each dump.

sudo procdump -C 65 -n 3 -s 5 -p 1234

The following will create a core dump when CPU usage is outside the range [10,65].

sudo procdump -c 10 -C 65 -p 1234

The following will create a core dump when CPU usage is >= 65% or memory usage is >= 100 MB.

sudo procdump -C 65 -M 100 -p 1234

The following will create a core dump in the /tmp directory immediately.

sudo procdump -o /tmp -p 1234

The following will create a core dump in the current directory with the name dump_0.1234. If -n is used, the files will be named dump_0.1234, dump_1.1234 and so on.

sudo procdump -o dump -p 1234

The following will create a core dump when a SIGSEGV occurs.

sudo procdump -G 11 -p 1234

All options can also be used with -w instead of -p. -w will wait for a process with the given name.

The following waits for a process named my_application and creates a core dump immediately when it is found.

sudo procdump -w my_application

Current Limitations

• Currently will only run on Linux Kernels version 3.5+
• Does not have full feature parity with Windows version of ProcDump, specifically, stay alive functionality, and custom performance counters

Feedback

• Ask a question on StackOverflow (tag with ProcDumpForLinux)
• Request a new feature on GitHub
• Vote for popular feature requests
• File a bug in GitHub Issues

Contributing

If you are interested in fixing issues and contributing directly to the code base, please see the document How to Contribute, which covers the following:

• How to build and run from source
• The development workflow, including debugging and running tests
• Coding Guidelines
• Submitting pull requests

Please see also our Code of Conduct.

License

Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Licensed under the MIT License.