In message <199610200741.JAA27953@uriah.heep.sax.de>, J Wunsch writes:
>As Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>
>> It was pointed out by me already 8 years ago:
>> 
>>    "[...] core-dumps as default is an evil thing.  There should be
>>     some way to >enable< core-dumps when you want them, rather than
>>     have them as default.  This would also solve security issue 
>>     where a core-dump may contain sensitive information. [...]"
>> 
>> What we need is really a new syscall:
>> 
>> 	procctl(pid, function, arg)
>
>The only problem with this is that programs tend to dump core without
>asking the developer first. ;-)  That's the nature of bugs, the
>programmer often does not anticipate them.  Thus, they are sometimes a
>good means for a post-mortem analysis.

I suppose most people would have the system-wide default be "core-dumps on"

--
Poul-Henning Kamp           | phk@FreeBSD.ORG       FreeBSD Core-team.
http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk    Private mailbox.
whois: [PHK]                | phk@ref.tfs.com       TRW Financial Systems, Inc.
Future will arrive by its own means, progress not so.