Debugging techniques and core dumps (was Re: ebay - cardamatic)

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Mon Feb 14 19:46:31 2005

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com> writes:

 Tom> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Eric Smith wrote:
>> When I get a core dump, if it's not immediately obvious what was
>> wrong, I load it into the debugger (gdb) to investigate it. For
>> gdb, the core dump filename is an optional command line parameter
>> after the executable file.

 Tom> Oh! gdb dumps! I was thinking more about line printer hex
 Tom> (octal) dumps. Manual stack traces and all that sort of rot. I
 Tom> knew people who could do that.

Oh sure, I still do that from time to time. (Cyber retrocomputing...)

Cybers are particularly entertaining. If you get your peripheral
processor stuck, all you get is a dump of memory. You don't get the
accumulator; you do NOT get the program counter. Oh yes, the hardware
puts a zero in memory where the program counter was, so if you can
figure out which of the various zeroes doesn't belong, then you're in
luck.

Fortunately I now have an emulator, so I can see a lot more than in
the old days.

    paul
Received on Mon Feb 14 2005 - 19:46:31 GMT