If you want to get core dumps for intermittent Apache/mod_php crashes in Linux, you will probably need this module (otherwise Linux kernel will refuse to dump core, whatever you put into your OS or Apache configuration):
/*
* Author: Domas Mituzas
* Released to public domain
*
* apxs -c -i mod_dumpcore.c
* and...
* LoadModule dumpcore_module .../path/to/mod_dumpcore.c
* CoreDumpDirectory /tmp/cores/
* and...
* sysctl -w kernel.core_pattern=/tmp/cores/core.%p.%t
*/
#include "httpd.h"
#include "http_config.h"
#include <sys/prctl.h>
static int dumpcore_handler(request_rec *r)
{ prctl(PR_SET_DUMPABLE,1,0,0,0); return DECLINED; }
static void dumpcore_register_hooks(apr_pool_t *p)
{ap_hook_handler(dumpcore_handler, NULL, NULL, APR_HOOK_MIDDLE);}
module AP_MODULE_DECLARE_DATA dumpcore_module = {
STANDARD20_MODULE_STUFF, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL,
dumpcore_register_hooks };
P.S. I was quite astonished to find out that nobody ever needed this, I remember quite a few discussions after which we fixed this in MySQL two years ago.
Update: there’s also ‘echo 1 > /proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable’ or ‘sysctl -w fs.suid_dumpable=1′ – now I recall whole story, RHEL3 and RHEL4 didn’t have this, so we had to do prctl() hack, whereas later Linux kernel versions allowed this workaround.