Software Diagnostics Library

Debugger logs (textual output) from commands like !process 0 ff and various scripts can be very long and consist of thousands of pages. I found the following reading technique useful for my daily memory dump analysis activities:

CSA-QSA

Checklists-Skim-Analyze—Questions-Survey-Analyze   

1. First, have a checklist

2. Skim through the log several times

3. Write analysis notes

4. Have a list of questions based on problem description and steps 1-3

5. Survey the log

6. Write analysis notes

Repeat steps 2,3 and 5,6 if necessary.

This technique can also be applied to reading any large logs, for example, voluminous CDF or ETW traces.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 7:40 pm and is filed under CDF Analysis Tips and Tricks, Crash Dump Analysis, Crash Dump Patterns, Debugging, Software Technical Support, Stack Trace Collection, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.