post mortem debugging possible?

[Sascha Doerdelmann]

Hi,

does anybody know how to get a core dump of failing Ruby programs on
Windows? I am trying to get a little bit more information about a
Segmentation Fault I get in the FXRuby part of my application. Dr.
Watson is enabled as post mortem debugger but this Dr. seems to detect
no failure at all with my crashing program.

Cheers
Sascha

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Sascha,

SD> Hi,

SD> does anybody know how to get a core dump of failing Ruby programs on
SD> Windows? I am trying to get a little bit more information about a
SD> Segmentation Fault I get in the FXRuby part of my application. Dr.
SD> Watson is enabled as post mortem debugger but this Dr. seems to detect
SD> no failure at all with my crashing program.

First you must recompile FXRuby and especially Fox with all debugging
information turned on. Then it should be possible to attach MSVC to
the ruby.exe process. But make sure that the *.pdb files are put in
the same dir as the dll.

And remeber it's far from easy so be prepared that spend a lot of
time.

 

[Sascha Doerdelmann]

Hello Lothar,

thank you for the anwer. I added it to the RubyGarden page
DebugAnExtension.

First you must recompile [...] with all
debugging information turned on

This would help to use a debugger while execution. I was not aware of
the need for recompile to create a crash dump.

And remeber it's far from easy so be
prepared that spend a lot of time.

That's why I wanted to get an idea of where
to search for the error first. ;-)

Cheers,
Sascha

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Sascha,


SD> This would help to use a debugger while execution. I was not aware of
SD> the need for recompile to create a crash dump.

A crash dump without debugging symbols will not help you very much as
it only points to some meaningless addresses and raw memory.
And remember that windows don't a have a concept like a crash dump
(as i think you compare it to a "core dump" on Unix systems) so a
crash dump is nothing more then attaching a debugger to a process that
run into an execeptional state.