How to limit the total size of core files and automatically clean old core files?

Hi All,
I have a situation like below. I am using RHEL 5.

I have multiple user processes running on my machine.
I have set the appropriate sizes for core file size.
But my process management deamon is designed to restart any process that terminates.
Hence the process starts up again.
If I have a very bad nasty defect like say SEGV, it will keep on dumping core and restarting and hence filling my machine with core files until I run out of space on the partition.

My Questions:

Is there a provision in Linux to automatically cleanup the old corefiles when we reach a certain limit ?
Is there a provision in Linux to set a upper limit for space occupied by all core files (not individual core files) ?


Any inputs appreciated.

Thanks,
SADA

If you set an appropriate naming pattern for the core files in /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern, you can at least partially solve the problem:

* set a generic filename, so that subsequent core dumps overwrite the older ones
* or set a full path to a partition that is not critical
* or set a full path to a particular directory, and have a daemon that makes use of inotify to limit the number of files in that directory to a manageable size (even just a script that uses the inotify-tools)
* or use a cron job to search for and delete excess core files