NAME

netdumpd —

receive kernel core dumps over the network

SYNOPSIS

netdumpd [-a addr] [-D] [-d dumpdir] [-i postscript] [-P pidfile] [-p path]

DESCRIPTION

The netdumpd utility listens on a UDP socket for incoming connections from a FreeBSD kernel core dumping over the network. It effectively acts as a write-only TFTP server.

The following options are available:

-a: Bind the daemon to the given address “addr”.
-D: Run the utility in debugging mode. The daemon version is not entered while the output is printed entirely on the console.
-d: Save the core dumps to the specified “dumpdir” directory. The default directory is /var/crash.
Clients may optionally specify a relative directory path when initiating a netdump. This path is appended to “dumpdir” to obtain a directory in which to save the core dump. The relative path may not contain ".." components. Additionally, no symbolic link in the path may contain ".." components.
-i: Execute the script “script” after each dump received. The script accepts the following strings as parameters: a reason for invocation, the client address, the client hostname, the info file name and the core dump file name. The script is executed from the “dumpdir” directory.
-P: Specify an alternative file in which to store the process ID. The default is /var/run/netdumpd.pid.
-p: A directory path relative to “dumpdir” in which to save core dumps for clients that do not specify a relative path. Core dumps from clients that specify an invalid directory path are saved in the default directory.

SECURITY

The netdumpd utility does not perform any authentication of clients and should therefore be configured to listen only to trusted networks. netdumpd can be made to write an arbitrary amount of client data to a locally-mounted filesystem.

EXAMPLES

Run netdumpd in the current directory, without requiring any special privileges:

$ netdumpd -D -d .
  -P ./netdumpd.pid

HISTORY

The netdumpd utility appeared in FreeBSD 12.0.