Archive for July 9th, 2008

Memory Dump Analysis and Computationalism

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Computer consciousness, the mind / body problem for computers, life inside the machine - all these topics are of great interest to me after I read Rosen’s book and wrote this post:

Is there any life inside Windows?

Although the book says there is no life there I still cannot believe it. To educate myself in recent developments in the computational theory of mind I opened this book:

Computationalism: New Directions

Buy from Amazon

If minds ultimately happen to be computers why not the other way around?

I removed the book jacket and found that it is yellow, almost like the spine and the title of my Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1! This really reinforced my dream about memory slices from thinking computers :-) Here is the picture of the book with its jacket removed:

Jokes apart, this book is really good in removing narrowness of the current computer science education we get as undergraduates. I will post a review on my Literate Scientist blog as soon as I read through sufficient number of pages.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Fun with Crash Dumps, Science of Memory Dump Analysis | No Comments »

It’s Not a Bug, It’s Not a Feature, It’s a Gift!

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

This little quotation book is a perfect gift to any software engineer or scientist:

It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature!: Computer Wit and Wisdom

Buy from Amazon

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Books, Crash Dump Analysis, Debugging, Fun with Crash Dumps | No Comments »

The Hidden Tomb in Pyramid of Software Change

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

How does software change in production environment? My experience suggests 3 major ways:

  1. Executive decision to replace the whole software product with another competing product.
  2. Software troubleshooting at component level like upgrading or eliminating suspicious components and unrelated products that influence behaviour.
  3. Correction of individual components after debugging to address implementation and functional defects, non-functional, design or architecture deficiencies.

This can be shown on the following rough diagram (excluding possible overlapping of levels) highlighting the often hidden role of memory dump analysis in software change:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Crash Dump Analysis, Debugging, Software Technical Support, Troubleshooting Methodology | No Comments »

Crash Dump Analysis AntiPatterns (Part 10)

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Often engineers spend 10 minutes pursuing a certain investigation path and then prematurely closing it and switching to another. This is what I call Myopic Troubleshooting and Debugging.

This anti-pattern name was inspired by Daniel Dennett’s discussion of insufficiently patient scientists doing computer simulations:

“mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity” (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, page 175).

Paraphrasing we can say that engineers think of impossibility where their imagination fails.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in AntiPatterns, Crash Dump Analysis, Crash Dump Patterns, Debugging, Software Technical Support, Troubleshooting Methodology | No Comments »

Crash Dump Analysis Patterns (Part 69)

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Sometimes patterns like Message Box and / or Stack Trace semantics reveal another pattern that I call Self-Diagnosis which may or may not result in Self-Dump. The diagnostic message may reveal the problem internally detected by runtime environment.

Consider the following stack trace:

0:000> kv
ChildEBP RetAddr  Args to Child             
0012e8c0 77f4bf53 77f4610a 00000000 00000000 ntdll!KiFastSystemCallRet
0012e8f8 77f3965e 000101a2 00000000 00000001 user32!NtUserWaitMessage+0xc
0012e920 77f4f762 77f30000 00151768 00000000 user32!InternalDialogBox+0xd0
0012ebe0 77f4f047 0012ed3c 00000000 ffffffff user32!SoftModalMessageBox+0x94b
0012ed30 77f4eec9 0012ed3c 00000028 00000000 user32!MessageBoxWorker+0x2ba
0012ed88 77f87d0d 00000000 001511a8 0014ef50 user32!MessageBoxTimeoutW+0x7a
0012edbc 77f742c8 00000000 0012ee70 1001d7d4 user32!MessageBoxTimeoutA+0x9c
0012eddc 77f742a4 00000000 0012ee70 1001d7d4 user32!MessageBoxExA+0x1b
0012edf8 10014c9a 00000000 0012ee70 1001d7d4 user32!MessageBoxA+0×45
WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
0012ee2c 10010221 0012ee70 1001d7d4 00012010 component!Error+0×7e4a
[…]

Dumping the message box message and its title shows that Visual C++ runtime detected a buffer overflow condition:

0:000> da 0012ee70
0012ee70  "Buffer overrun detected!..Progra”
0012ee90  “m: E:\W\program.exe..A buffer ov”
0012eeb0  “errun has been detected which ha”
0012eed0  “s corrupted the program’s.intern”
0012eef0  “al state.  The program cannot sa”
0012ef10  “fely continue execution and must”
0012ef30  “.now be terminated..”

0:000> da 1001d7d4
1001d7d4  "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Lib"
1001d7f4  "rary"

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Crash Dump Analysis, Crash Dump Patterns, Debugging | 9 Comments »

Software Exceptions: a Paranormal View

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Some view minds as software and some view software as minds. There is also mind / body problem for humans and less known mind / body problem for computers. This is what I define as ”Metaphorical Bijection“ (seems I coined a new term again). Some view minds as constrained by brains. Therefore we can say that software might be constrained by hardware too and exceptions (faults) arise when software is accidentally written for hardware or another software if hardware is virtualized, simulated, without limitations that constrain software execution. The current hardware constrains that accidentally written software and generates faults because it cannot deal with paranormal effects. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Crash Dump Analysis, Debugging, Fun with Crash Dumps, Hardware, New Words, Philosophy, Science of Memory Dump Analysis, Virtualization | 2 Comments »

From Russia with a Bug

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Just came from Russia where in the woods of Udmurtia I found this bug:

It will be on a front page of one of my forthcoming books scheduled by the end of August.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Posted in Announcements, Books, Fun with Crash Dumps, Publishing | No Comments »