Debug::FaultAutoBT is a Perl module for automatic backtrace extractor on SIGSEGV, SIGBUS, etc.

SYNOPSIS

use Debug::FaultAutoBT;

use File::Spec::Functions;
my $tmp_dir = File::Spec::Functions::tmpdir;

my $trace = Debug::FaultAutoBT->new(
dir => "$tmp_dir",
#verbose => 1,
#exec_path => /home/stas/perl/bin/perl,
#core_path_base => catfile($tmp_dir, "mycore"),
#command_path => catfile($tmp_dir, "my-gdb-command"),
#debugger => "gdb",
);

# enable the sighandler
$trace->ready();

# or simply:
Debug::FaultAutoBT->new(dir => "$tmp_dir")->ready;

When a signal, that normally causes a coredump, is delivered This module attempts to automatically extract a backtrace, rather than letting the core file be dumped. This has the following benefits:

no need to setup the environment to allow core file dumped. Sometimes people just dont know how to set it up. Sometimes you arent allowed to set it up (e.g., when the webserver environment is not under your control).

if many Perl programs are run in a row and more than one program segfaults its possible to collect all backtraces, rathen then aborting the run on the first segfault or staying with only the last core file, which will overwrite all the previous ones. For example consider a live webserver or a test suite which may segfault many times for different reasons.

for huge core files, this approach saves disk space. And can be a saver when you dont have disk space left for various reasons (passed the quota?), but still have a few kilo-bytes left.

Currently the following signals are trapped:

SIGQUIT
SIGILL
SIGTRAP
SIGABRT
SIGEMT
SIGFPE
SIGBUS
SIGSEGV
SIGSYS

(If you know of other signals that should be trapped let me know. thanks.)