Archive for January 8th, 2008

2007 in Retrospection (Part 2)

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Here is the list of 100 most frequent phrases and keywords (out of almost 30,000 unique phrases recorded for 2007) from various search engines that brought people to my blog. Therefore I believe that publishing this list will bring more people searching for the same phrases straight to my blog, some kind of “SEO resonance” :-)

crash dump analysis
vista crash dump
what is kifastsystemcallret
kmode_exception_not_handled
crash dump
windbg commands
crash dump vista
werfault.exe
dump analysis
stressprinters
kernel_mode_exception_not_handled
debugging by thinking
interrupt enable flag asmpedia
fnodobfm
dr watson vista
debugging techniques using windbg
component timestamps crash dump
dumpanalysis
system_thread_exception_not_handled
windbg script
stack trace reconstruction
error inittyperead( teb )
false positive dump
coupled processes windbg
windbg
gs peb teb register
user mode process dumper
windows rootkits drivers rus
minidump analysis
windbg analyze
drwtsn32 vista
crash dumps
debugware.com
ntdll!kifastsystemcallret
csrss crash avoid
kifastsystemcallret
windbg scripts
bugcheck explained
memory dumping mechanism
irql_not_less_or_equal
dump analyzer
vdtw30.dll
vista dr watson
userdump
kei386eoihelper
windbg command
vista memory dump
windows crash kernel analysis
dmitry vostokov
wermgr.exe
kernel32!pnlsuserinfo
userdump.exe
!clrstack
vista crash analysis
xp ntsd .loadby
drwatson vista
how to use windbg
receivelotsacalls
system_thread_exception_not_handled (7e)
pspunhandledexceptioninsystemthread
x64 debugging
dr watson postmortem debugger
werfault.exe vista
wersvc
automate windbg dmp info
windbg tips
faultrep.dll
windbg tutorial
convertticket
windows crash dump analysis
your debugger is not using the correct symbols
werfault
warning: frame ip not in any known module. following frames may be wrong.
windbg !analyze
windbg dump
crash dump analyzer
analyze minidump
crash dump analysis blog
when a process dies silently
windbg crash dump analysis
vista crash dump analysis
dr watson postmortem
frame ip not in any known module
memory dump
windbg crash dump analysis blog
advanced windows debugging
ntsd vista
rtlactivateactivationcontextunsafefast
unable to find module ‘mscorwks’
vista crash dumps
exception_double_fault
vista 64bit post mortem debugger
windows vista crash dump
crash dump analysis tool
what is memory dump
crash dump in vista
double fault + x64
memory dump analysis
symbol file could not be found
systemdump

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Announcements, Crash Dump Analysis, DumpAnalysis.org Statistics | 2 Comments »

What is a Software Defect?

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Software can be considered as models of real or imagined systems which may be models themselves. Any modeling act involves a mapping between a system and a model that preserves causal, ordering and inclusion relationships and a mapping from the model to the system that translates emerging relationships and causal structures back to that system. The latter I call modeling expectations and any observed deviations in structure and behavior between the model and the system I call software defects which can be functional failures, error messages, crashes or hangs (red line on diagrams below):

Consider ATM software as a venerable example. It models imagined world of ATM transactions which we call ATM software requirements. The latter specifies ACID (atomic, consistent, isolated and durable) transaction rules. If they are broken by the written software we have the defect:

What are software requirements? They are models of real or imagined systems or can be models of past causal and relationship experiences. If requirements are wrong they do not translate back and we still consider software as having a defect:

Translating this to ATM example we have:

Another example where the perceived absence of failures can be considered as a defect is the program designed to model memory leaks that might not be leaking due to a defect in its source code.

Now we can answer the question ”What is a memory corruption?” which is the topic of the next post.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Debugging, Science of Memory Dump Analysis | 2 Comments »