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

Question

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?

Answer 1

Something like this? You can also check out the checkpointing page on wikipedia.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

A core dump is basically this, so yes, it must be possible to get.

What you really want is a way to restore that dump as a running program. That might be more difficult.