I'm having a problem with certain programs crashing and in order to get help from the authors (the crashes are caused by dri when I run OpenGL programs) I'd like to reproduce the crash, then do a back trace to give them information about it. I'm having issues, and I'm hoping someone knows how to help me with them. The directions they give to do the back trace are to run the following commands:

ulimit -c unlimited
glxgears (this runs a 3D program to reproduce the crash)
gdb -c core 'which glxgears'
bt

Following the third command I get an error:

This GDB was configured as "i586-mandrake-linux-gnu"...which glxgears: No such file or directory.

/home/springshades/core: No such file or directory.

However, the program continues to run. Now, after the fourth command I get:

No stack.

Anyone know what this problem could be? I have NO experience with back traces, so I don't even know what to google for. I've tried googling back trace, but it seems like this or similar sets of commands work for just about everyone else. Could this be a Mandriva LE 2005 bug? Specific to my distro or something? I'm using the kernel that comes with the distro, haven't recompiled it.

Try running just:
You should then get a gdb prompt, just type run
GDB will spit out lots of info, copy and paste this into a text file.

Hope that helps

Thanks, this probably should have helped, but still issues. I'm wondering if maybe the program is seg faulting before the debugger can even get any information. I'm not sure. I'm going to give up on this approach for now, thanks for your help.