> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 19:02:52 -0500 (EST)
> From: Marko Siladin <msiladin@athos.mas.vcu.edu>
> To: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Core dumps & restarting (fwd)
>
> Forwarded message:
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > I was wandering how to stop a process, reboot the machine, and
> > restart that process. Is there a way to provoke a program to dump
> > itself, and restart it after the reboot?
> >
> > Maybe we can define a new executable format for it to work ;-)
> >
> Although this is not really kernel related - you could just run
> a crontab job every so often that checks if the process is still
> alive and if not reboots the machine (or restarts it)
Actually, this is related. What he said is
<can I make a binary format that dumps its state information out in such
a way as to be able to continue it, just from the state information.>
I.E.
kill -SEGV <my_process>
./core
and have it continue.
Now the answer: If I remember right, that's how GNU emacs works... but since
I don't use emacs I don't remember. I just had to help someone build it once.
But part of the build process involved a core dump.
So it's possible... you may also want to look at linux-clusters and their
documentation (porting a process from one physical machine to another involves
exactally the same things you are talking about: preserving all the state
information and restarting using that)
So work is being done on it.
--Dan