Thanks for your answer and, the detailed explanations. > The core dumps in question here are for when the OS panics. Core dumps > can be used by developers to look at what went wrong, but in order to do > so, you may need everything that was in RAM at the time of the panic.
That answered my question fully, thanks. > So...the kernel can dump to swap (whatever was in swap wasn't in RAM, > thus wasn't part of what caused the panic). On next boot, savecore will > find the dump in swap, and save it to /var. > > So that means swap has to be at least the size of RAM and you have to > have AT LEAST that much space FREE on your /var partition. Your 256G > SSD just got ~70G smaller. Ouch. Yes, that I understood. > ... or ... > > you can look at the big picture and realize... > 1) you probably aren't a developer. > 2) you probably haven't seen a core dump. Yep, true. > 3) you probably wouldn't know what to do with the core dump. Me not (who knows what comes in the future) but, a developer. > 4) if you got a core dump and wanted to send it to a developer, a 32G > core dump would probably create a lot of problems for everyone. Yes, from the view of a user (I have no problems to admit, that I don't know things), I don't expected, that a core dump really could have 32 GB of size. As you say before - Ouch. > 5) that's a freaking big chunk of your SSD devoted to stuff you are > unlikely to ever do anything with! Yep, I will delete swap and use it for other things. > and thus, I'll suggest you just don't worry about it. IF you manage to > find a way to panic your machine, drop the memory waaaay down to 2G or > so, reproduce it and worry about a 2G core dump. Not possible, there are 4 x 8 GB in it. Where we are again at the size problem from before. > And -- even if you do have a system panic, very often developers can > make sense out of what went wrong from the output of the debugger's > trace and ps commands, rather than having to dig through an entire core > dump. This is always what they ask for FIRST. Ok, I use OpenBSD only for some weeks / months more or less often. I got back my ThinkPad from repair and took now more time to read things and play around ... it is like a puzzle where you come across this kind of questions.
