Dump examines files on an ext2 filesystem and determines which files need to be backed up. These files are copied to the given disk, tape or other storage medium for safe keeping (see the -f option below for doing remote backups). A dump that is larger than the output medium is broken into multiple volumes. On most media the size is determined by writing until an end-of-media indication is returned.
ump requires operator intervention on these conditions: end of tape, end of dump, tape write error, tape open error or disk read error (if there is more than a threshold of nr errors). In addition to alerting all operators implied by the -n key, dump interacts with the operator on dump's control terminal at times when dump can no longer proceed, or if something is grossly wrong. All questions dump poses must be answered by typing yes'' or
no'' appropriately.
Since making a dump involves a lot of time and effort for full dumps, dump checkpoints itself at the start of each tape volume. If writing that volume fails for some reason, dump will, with operator permission, restart itself from the checkpoint after the old tape has been rewound and removed, and a new tape has been mounted.
Dump tells the operator what is going on at periodic intervals, including usually low estimates of the number of blocks to write, the number of tapes it will take, the time to completion, and the time to the tape change. The output is verbose, so that others know that the terminal controlling dump is busy, and will be for some time.
gdb <executable> <core-file> or gdb <executable> -c <core-file>
$ gdb ./exe -p param1 -i param2 -o param3 core.pid