Debugging dmesg logs

Question

I noticed I have the following in my logs. I just am not sure as to how to go about figuring out how to fix or find out what is causing them and if they are serious.

[582046.956291] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 18482 0 0 1379281138 e pipe failed
[582346.769892] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 21093 0 0 1379281439 e pipe failed
[582646.586134] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 23723 0 0 1379281739 e pipe failed
[582946.390029] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 26342 0 0 1379282039 e pipe failed
[583246.202851] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 29010 0 0 1379282340 e pipe failed
[583546.018408] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 31620 0 0 1379282640 e pipe failed
[583845.836688] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 1837 0 0 1379282940 e pipe failed
[584145.645968] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 4416 0 0 1379283241 e pipe failed
[584445.455705] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 7001 0 0 1379283541 e pipe failed
[584745.266532] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 9600 0 0 1379283841 e pipe failed
[585045.074399] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 12209 0 0 1379284141 e pipe failed
[585344.885464] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 14790 0 0 1379284442 e pipe failed
[585644.743818] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 17605 0 0 1379284742 e pipe failed
[585944.511572] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 20183 0 0 1379285042 e pipe failed
[586244.315990] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 22781 0 0 1379285343 e pipe failed
[586544.123020] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 25385 0 0 1379285643 e pipe failed
[586843.932084] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 27984 0 0 1379285943 e pipe failed
[587143.742379] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 30608 0 0 1379286244 e pipe failed
[587443.559349] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 799 0 0 1379286544 e pipe failed
[587743.373027] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 3420 0 0 1379286844 e pipe failed
[588043.175248] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 6031 0 0 1379287145 e pipe failed
[588342.986730] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 8665 0 0 1379287445 e pipe failed
[588642.795951] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 11279 0 0 1379287745 e pipe failed
[588942.608088] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 13915 0 0 1379288045 e pipe failed
[589242.420741] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 16728 0 0 1379288346 e pipe failed
[589542.235065] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 19355 0 0 1379288646 e pipe failed
[589842.061502] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 21998 0 0 1379288946 e pipe failed
[590141.856687] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 24657 0 0 1379289247 e pipe failed
[590441.700335] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 27307 0 0 1379289547 e pipe failed
[590741.483298] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 29944 0 0 1379289847 e pipe failed
[591041.286647] Core dump to |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp 7 0 32554 0 0 1379290148 e pipe failed

Answer 1

A core dump is generated when a program fails with unexpected results. The above is telling you a command failed and copy of the program that was in memory has handled by the abrt daemon (the command /usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp). You can then use tools such as gdb to debug the failure. Note: gdb is not for the faint-hearted!

Quite often these are the result of poorly written code (it needs to handle exceptions a little better), out of memory issues, or underlying issues such as the command was linked with a certain dynamic load library that has now been changed and the crashing program can no longer use it in the way it expects to.

From this page, there are details on what the Abrt process is, and how it handles cores.

When “abrtd” is running, the value of sysctl variable “kernel.core_pattern” is different from the above as shown below:

$sysctl -a|grep core_pattern kernel.core_pattern = |/usr/libexec/abrt-hook-ccpp /var/cache/abrt %p %s %u %c

“abrtd” creates a sub-directory (named something like “ccpp-1279914365-14618″) in the directory “/var/cache/abrt” as shown in the value of the variable. This also means that the core files will also be stored in that sub-directory in the “/var/cache/abrt” directory (in addition to the current directory where application was run). ABRT daemon also creates other files in addition to the core dump files in the sub-directory to further help users in debugging the crash issue.