This sysctl is only applicable when core_pattern is configured to pipe core files to a user space helper (when the first character of core_pattern is a ‘|’, see above). When collecting cores via a pipe to an application, it is occasionally useful for the collecting application to gather data about the crashing process from its /proc/pid directory. In order to do this safely, the kernel must wait for the collecting process to exit, so as not to remove the crashing processes proc files prematurely. This in turn creates the possibility that a misbehaving userspace collecting process can block the reaping of a crashed process simply by never exiting. This sysctl defends against that. It defines how many concurrent crashing processes may be piped to user space applications in parallel. If this value is exceeded, then those crashing processes above that value are noted via the kernel log and their cores are skipped. 0 is a special value, indicating that unlimited processes may be captured in parallel, but that no waiting will take place (i.e. the collecting process is not guaranteed access to /proc/