Re: 50MB large auto-save file after Emacs crash

[Stephen Berman]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 22:24:40 +0200 Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:

>> From: Stephen Berman <address@hidden>
>> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:28:08 +0100
>> 
>> > Also, please make sure your shell setup doesn't disable core dumps
>> > (with a ulimit command).
>> 
>> My system is in fact set up not to create core files
>
> So it is plausible that Emacs crashed, but didn't leave a core dump
> file behind.  Too bad.
>
>> but I can change that.  Can you recommend a reasonable maximum size?
>
> I recommend `unlimited'.  I'm serious: there's no way to know in
> advance how large will be the memory footprint of your Emacs (or any
> other program, for that matter) when it crashes.  The core file that
> describes a crash is worth its every byte in gold.

Ok, I'll give it a try.

>> > In general, if Emacs crashes, it should leave behind a core dump file;
>> > if core files are not disabled, then it's possible that Emacs was
>> > either killed by the OS (thus the advice to look in SYSLOG), or it
>> > simply exited.
>> 
>> It appears in this case to be the latter.
>
> No, I don't think so: if it exited, it would have saved the files, not
> leave auto-save files.  I think it crashed.
>
>> FWIW, I still have the
>> auto-save file, but even compressed it's bigger than 13MB, so I don't
>> want to attach it.  Anyway, I doubt it's useful, but just to get an
>> idea of it, I've attached the first 95 lines.
>
> What was the name of the file?

To my embarrassment, I misidentified the file: it wasn't actually an
auto-save file, but an auto-save-list file; its absolute file name is
/home/steve/.emacs.d/auto-save-list/.saves-931-escher.local.home~

Steve Berman