How to load core dump in GDB

Running an erroneous program may result it in exiting and dumping a core dump file named core. For example:

$ ./a.out
./a.out terminated by signal SIGSEGV (Address boundary error)

We need to load the core dump file in GDB to begin investigating the cause of the error. This is typically done using the command:

$ gdb ./a.out core

GDB loads the program and using the information from the core dump, the program stack and other information is restored to the point where it encountered the error.

A common first step in investigation is print the stack frames at this point:

(gdb) backtrace

Tried with: GDB 7.7.1, GCC 5.1.0 and Ubuntu 14.04