Setting core size to 0

[dictum9]

I have a system which constantly dumps core (an older version of sshd apparently does) and as a temporary solution, I would like to set core size to 0 so it's never generated, what's the command in .profile?

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

shalom,

ulimit -Sc0

In .profile.

It will prevent core files altogether.

Don't do it system wide or to the oracle user because oracle needs them turned on for diagnosis of problems with the database and application server products.

SEP

[dictum9]

Can I do it as root? the root user is creating core files, since sshd is running as root.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Yes, the ulimit works for 'root', too. You can test this by doing:

# ulimit -Sc 0
# cd /tmp
# ls -l core
core not found
# sleep 60 &
[1] 27379
# kill -abrt 27379
# ls -l core
-rw------- 1 root sys 0 Oct 25 15:46 core
[1] + Abort sleep 60 &

...note the 0-size core file that is created instead of a "normal" large one.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Heironimus]

For a daemon like sshd you probably want to add the ulimit to the init script. The profile won't be sourced by init scripts.

[Bill Hassell]

As mentioned, sshd doesn't login as root (so it never uses .profile), it is simply started during bootup with a start/stop script. You need to add ulimit -c 0 to the sshd start/stop script in /sbin/init.d. Note that option -S (soft) limit isn't meaningful for a daemon as there is no one to change the ulimit value after sshd is started.