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From: tmh@prosun.first.gmd.de (Thomas Hoberg)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: suspension of long process
Message-ID: <453@prosun.first.gmd.de>
Date: 12 Oct 90 20:34:22 GMT
References: <3940@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>
Organization: GMD-FIRST, D-1000 Berlin 12, Germany (West)
Lines: 21

I have thought a bit about that problem, too, some time ago. I never
implemented a solution, but I had the following ideas:

Programs like TeX, GNU-Emacs and some SCHEME interpreter I know use mechnisms 
to either dump themselves (after having loaded some libraries) in a form that
can be restarted later, or some tool, to turn a core dump back into an
executable program. For the first variant, your program should install a
signal handler for some user defined signal to dump it, for the second, send
a SIG_QUIT to the programm to get a core dump, then manually 'undump' it with
that utility you hopefully found in the TeX or Emacs distribution, to get an
executable that can be restarted. I guess this is a bit messy, and I would
like to see a facility to force processes to the disk on the run in UNIX, 
because it might generally make automatic powerfail restarts possible.

  ;-) Tom

PS. Tell me, if you got it to work!

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Thomas M. Hoberg                                   tmh@prosun.first.gmd.de
GMD Berlin, Hardenbergplatz 2, 1000 Berlin 12, Germany   +49-30-254 99-160