bash Cookbook

Preventing Core Dumps

Problem

You want to prevent your script from dumping core in the case of an unrecoverable error, since core dumps may contain sensitive data from memory such as passwords.

Solution

Use the bash built-in ulimit to set the core file size limit to 0, typically in your .bashrc file:

ulimit -H -c 0 --

Discussion

Core dumps are intended for debugging and contain an image of the memory used by the process at the time it failed. As such, the file will contain anything the process had stored in memory (e.g., user-entered passwords).

Set this in a system-level file such as /etc/profile or /etc/bashrc to which users have no write access if you don’t want them to be able to change it.

See Also

• help ulimit