Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/961414/

Stephen Brennan describes
kernel core dumps in excruciating detail.

Kernel core dumps are complex. They are not simply copies of system
memory; they contain plenty of extra metadata which is critical to
understanding their contents. And like any other type of data, the
design of the file formats can enable lots of flexibility and
power. However, due to the broad variety of tools out there, the
diversity of dump formats is overwhelming, and the lack of
documentation or specifications compounds the problem.