Extracting Core Dump from apport .crash file

Extracting core files from apport .crash files is sometimes challenging because bugs in apport itself. In this article we describe a method and apparatus to do it without relying on bogus tools.

Use this extrcore.awk program:

BEGIN {
core_started="N";
}
/CoreDump:/ {
core_started="Y";
getline;
}
{
if (core_started=="Y")
if ($0 ~ /^ /) print $1; else exit;
}

(With luck, the CoreDump element is the last in the file, so there would be no extraneous crap at the end of your output file).

It will now properly exit at the end of CoreDump: section, and won't insert anything else :)

Run it like this:

awk -f extrcore.awk _usr_lib_postgresql_9.3_bin_postgres.105.crash | base64 -d | gunzip > CoreDump

or

awk -f extrcore.awk _usr_lib_postgresql_9.3_bin_postgres.105.crash | base64 -d > CoreDump.gz