Dump a linux process's memory to file

Question

Is it possible to dump the current memory allocated for a process (by PID) to a file? Or read it somehow?

You can use my [proof-of-concept script](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6267/how-to-unswap-my-desktop/6271#6271) that reads [`/proc/$pid/mem`](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6301/how-do-i-read-from-proc-pid-mem-under-linux/6302#6302). — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Jan 15 '14 at 09:18
You might also want to read http://superuser.com/questions/236390/how-do-i-recover-a-form-in-firefox-without-installing-a-plugin and use gcore instead. — Simon A. Eugster, Apr 07 '14 at 20:05

score 70 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 02 '19 at 08:32

70

I've made a script that accomplishes this task.

The idea commes from James Lawrie's answer and this post: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/programming-scripting/52375-reading-memory-other-processes.html#post287195

#!/bin/bash

grep rw-p /proc/$1/maps \
| sed -n 's/^\([0-9a-f]*\)-\([0-9a-f]*\) .*$/\1 \2/p' \
| while read start stop; do \
    gdb --batch --pid $1 -ex \
        "dump memory $1-$start-$stop.dump 0x$start 0x$stop"; \
done

put this in a file (eg. "dump-all-memory-of-pid.sh") and make it executable

usage: ./dump-all-memory-of-pid.sh [pid]

The output is printed to files with the names: pid-startaddress-stopaddress.dump

Dependencies: gdb

edited Mar 02 '19 at 08:32

Qsiris

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answered Jul 18 '12 at 17:38

A. Nilsson

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Awesome! Just used it to discover which script a mysterious bash instance was running. – Tobia Jul 26 '16 at 17:02
1

Why are you only grepping for and dumpying ranges with `rw-p` permissions? – mxmlnkn Aug 04 '19 at 18:45
2

@mxmlnkn That's data (`rw-p`), the other ranges are for code (`r-xp`). If you want a dump of both, then go ahead and exchange `grep` for e.g. `cat`. – A. Nilsson Aug 05 '19 at 14:55

score 67 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 15 '14 at 04:25

I'm not sure how you dump all the memory to a file without doing this repeatedly (if anyone knows an automated way to get gdb to do this please let me know), but the following works for any one batch of memory assuming you know the pid:

$ cat /proc/[pid]/maps

This will be in the format (example):

00400000-00421000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 592398                             /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
00621000-00622000 rw-p 00021000 08:01 592398                             /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
00622000-0066a000 rw-p 00622000 00:00 0                                  [heap]
3e73200000-3e7321c000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 229378                         /lib64/ld-2.5.so
3e7341b000-3e7341c000 r--p 0001b000 08:01 229378                         /lib64/ld-2.5.so

Pick one batch of memory (so for example 00621000-00622000) then use gdb as root to attach to the process and dump that memory:

$ gdb --pid [pid]
(gdb) dump memory /root/output 0x00621000 0x00622000

Then analyse /root/output with the strings command, less you want the PuTTY all over your screen.

@Programming4life [gcore(1)](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/gcore.1.html) — julian, Apr 22 '17 at 12:59
So reading /proc//mem directly isn't an option? I get a read error if I try and open the 'file' in an editor. — borizzzzz, Jun 10 '22 at 11:26

Aquarius Power · Answer 3 · 2015-03-28T02:23:18.540

46

try

    gcore $pid

where $pid is the actual number of the pid; for more info see: info gcore

may take some time for the dump to happen, and some memory may not be readable, but is good enough... be aware also that it can create big files, I just created a 2GB file that way..

edited Mar 28 '15 at 02:23

answered Mar 09 '13 at 19:06

Aquarius Power

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Is `gcore` dumping a sparse file? – CMCDragonkai Jul 30 '16 at 07:02
1

@CMCDragonkai use `gcore -a PID` – Déjà vu May 21 '20 at 05:30

score 16 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 11 '20 at 15:00

16

Pure bash solution:

procdump() 
( 
    cat /proc/$1/maps | grep "rw-p" | awk '{print $1}' | ( IFS="-"
    while read a b; do
        dd if=/proc/$1/mem bs=$( getconf PAGESIZE ) iflag=skip_bytes,count_bytes \
           skip=$(( 0x$a )) count=$(( 0x$b - 0x$a )) of="$1_mem_$a.bin"
    done )
)

Usage: procdump PID

for a cleaner dump filter out *.so memory mapped shared libraries and empty memory ranges:

procdump()
( 
    cat /proc/$1/maps | grep -Fv ".so" | grep " 0 " | awk '{print $1}' | ( IFS="-"
    while read a b; do
        dd if=/proc/$1/mem bs=$( getconf PAGESIZE ) iflag=skip_bytes,count_bytes \
           skip=$(( 0x$a )) count=$(( 0x$b - 0x$a )) of="$1_mem_$a.bin"
    done )
)

edited Mar 11 '20 at 15:00

mxmlnkn

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answered Jun 05 '19 at 12:03

Zibri

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6

So, from what I understand, the idea behind the cleaner dump is that only in-memory files have a size attached to the memory region in contrast to actual application memory, which has size 0 (as the size actually used size is unknown by the OS). – mxmlnkn Aug 04 '19 at 19:04
2

One issue I have with this script is that the blocksize of 1 leads to a bandwidth of unacceptably slow ~30kB/s compared to using a blocksize equal to the page size (4096 for me) for which I get ~100MB/s! See [here](https://gist.github.com/mxmlnkn/05e1cd03a4102e353d792bd17687aed3). `getconf PAGESIZE` is used to get the page size and then the addresses and counts are divided by it. – mxmlnkn Aug 04 '19 at 19:30
@mxmlnkn that was lazy of me, feel free to correct my answer. – Zibri Mar 06 '20 at 00:06
Ok, will do. Note also that the count calculation is wrong because it is done with bd-ad but bd and ad are calculated only thereafter in the first bash snippet. – mxmlnkn Mar 06 '20 at 12:03

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 24 '10 at 17:58

3

man proc says :

/proc/[pid]/mem This file can be used to access the pages of a process's memory through open(2), read(2), and lseek(2).

Maybe it can help you

answered Aug 24 '10 at 17:58

Dom

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That's not sufficient, reading another process needs a combination of /proc//{mem,*maps}, ptrace, and some signal handling to avoid hanging the target process. – Tobu Mar 19 '13 at 10:57
2

@Tobu [Indeed](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6301/how-do-i-read-from-proc-pid-mem-under-linux/6302#6302). I wrote a [proof-of-concept script](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6267/how-to-unswap-my-desktop/6271#6271). – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jan 15 '14 at 09:18

score 3 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 17 '17 at 13:14

3

I made my own program to dump the entire process memory as well, it's in C so it can be cross-compiled to Android, which is what I needed.

You can also specify IP address and tcp port. Source code here.

edited Mar 17 '17 at 13:14

Community

1

answered Dec 27 '15 at 14:55

Tal Aloni

171
2

Michael Springer · Answer 7 · 2013-02-04T21:35:01.437

2

Tool to dump process to standard output, pcat/memdump:

edited Feb 04 '13 at 21:35

answered Feb 04 '13 at 21:27

Michael Springer

29
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This one is obsolete (removed at maintainer's request); I installed the old package anyway and it failed with "Input/output error; did you use GCC with another machine's header files?". – Tobu Mar 19 '13 at 11:14

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 07 '17 at 07:09

0

You can now use procdump from SysInternals suite on Linux:

https://github.com/Microsoft/ProcDump-for-Linux

answered Dec 07 '17 at 07:09

makumo

1

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 23 '19 at 08:33

If you want to dump a separate memory segment of the running process without creating huge core file (say with gcore), you can use a small tool from here. There is also one-liner in README if you wish to dump all readable segments into separate files.

Dump a linux process's memory to file

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