Alex Rivera | Logout

Storing entire process state on disk and restoring it later? (On Linux/Unix)

Asked 2011-04-18T01:35:50.090
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I would like to know: Is there a system call, library, kernel module or command line tool I can use to store the complete state of a running program on the disk?

That is: I would like to completely dump the memory, page layout, stack, registers, threads and file descriptors a process is currently using to a file on the hard drive and be able to restore it later seamlessly, just like an emulator "savestate" or a Virtual Machine "snapshot".

I would also like, if possible, to have multiple "backup copies" of the program state, so I can revert to a previous execution point if the program dies for some reason.

Is this possible?

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You should take a look at the BLCR project from Berkeley Lab. This is widely used by several MPI implementations to provide Checkpoint / Restart capabilities for parallel applications.

answered 2011-12-13T05:26:46.303

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