Software Diagnostics Library

I was surprised when I found on Microsoft MCP site that I can print my certificate for Windows Internals exam. Here it is:

Seems Microsoft certificates changed colours again. I was certified as MCSD in Microsoft® Windows® Architecture, OLE 2.0 and MFC in 1997 and after upgrading the status by passing “Analyzing Requirements and Defining Solution Architectures” exam around the turn of the century I got updated certificates with silver colors. I’ll put pictures of them later.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Shortly after celebrating 5 years at Citrix I got my first certificate since the 1st of December, 2006 when I was certified in Kernel Debugging for Windows®. Now it is also my first Citrix certificate and it marks my 5 year service:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I’ve just passed 5 year mark in my Citrix career and I say those years were really exciting! Incidentally at the same time, on 14th of October 2003 I started doing true memory dump analysis in WinDbg-sense of it despite the fact that I’d been doing debugging since 1987 and encountered the first symbolic assembly language debugger on PDP-11 RSX-11M Russian clone in 1988. Also 5 years ago I made my transition from software engineering world to software technical support and started my journey to become a manager.

I’ve put a timeline on a portal accessible from the main page or from the following link:

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/Timeline

The timeline will help me in the future to write my memoirs (Crash Dump: A Software Engineering Autobiography, ISBN: 978-1906717193).

Finally, to record the glorious Citrixofication of the world by various Citrixware, Opentask decided to publish a book where I plan to be an editor of various contributors and probably write a chapter or two myself:

Discovering Citrixware (ISBN: 978-1906717278) 

It is not about troubleshooting but more in a sense of discovery. More details will be announced later.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Seems railroad to it was a success: just got this message in my e-mail:

“Congratulations on passing your recent Microsoft Certification exam, inspiring confidence for your employer, your peers, and yourself with a widely-recognized validation of your skills on Microsoft technology.“

Because I haven’t done any exam since Windows Internals beta I assumed that I passed it and I was right! After registering at Microsoft certification site as MCP I was able to build my logo:

Here is the link to Exam 70-660 information and required skills:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exams/70-660.aspx

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

The most downloaded is StressPrinters:

http://support.citrix.com/product/xa/v4.5/tool/?sortBy=READCOUNT

The best rated tools are:

http://support.citrix.com/product/xa/v4.5/tool/?sortBy=RATING

• - Resource Manager Semantic Model Demonstration 
• - CDFControl 
• - Automatic Farm Tuner 
• - Extentrix Mobile Device Starter Kit for Citrix Presentation Server 
• - Mobile VM Manager 
• - MessageHistory 2.0 for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms 
• - TestDefaultDebugger v1.0 for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms   

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Crash Dump Analysis Portal (www.DumpAnalysis.org) has changed its menu bar:

• - Books menu item is renamed to Reviews.

• - Added new menu item Library which features many books from my collection partially pictured on the front cover of Memory Dump Analysis Anthology volumes.

You can also access the library from this link:

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/Library 

Currently you can browse about estimated 80% of the collection bought from Amazon.com. Books bought from Amazon (.co.uk | .de | .fr | .ca) and local bookshops will be added in the future.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

“Everything is memory dump.”

I’m very excited to announce that Volume 2 is available in paperback, hardcover and digital editions:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2

In one or two weeks paperback edition should also appear on Amazon and other bookstores. Amazon hardcover edition is planned to be available by the end of October.

I’m often asked when Volume 3 is available and I currently plan to release it in October - November, 2009. In the mean time I’m planning to concentrate on other publishing projects. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Out of 61,500,000 Google hits for “Everything is” X I couldn’t find X == memory dump so I presume this quotation is also traced to me

“Everything is memory dump.”

Dmitry Vostokov

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Out of 85,800 Google hits for “In the beginning there was the” X I couldn’t find X == crash so I presume this quotation is traced to me

“In the beginning there was the crash.”

Dmitry Vostokov

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

The book is nearly finished and here is the final TOC:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2: Table of Contents

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Today Citrix officially joined the club of public symbol server companies! Please refer to the following article for details:

How to Use the Citrix Symbol Server to Obtain Debug Symbols

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Here you can find the draft TOC for the forthcoming book “DebugWare: The Art and Craft of Writing Troubleshooting and Debugging Tools”:

Table of Contents

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Finally Dr. Debugalov adventures are going to be imprinted with bugs inside. This full-color book features never published before cartoons and a few surprises. It sets a new standard for entertainment in software engineering.

• Title: Dumps, Bugs and Debugging Forensics: The Adventures of Dr. Debugalov
• Author: Narasimha Vedala
• Editor: Dmitry Vostokov
• Publisher: Opentask (1 December 2008)
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.0
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-25-4
• Paperback: 64 pages

The cover was designed by Narasimha Vedala.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Here is the draft front cover for the forthcoming Windows Debugging Notebook:

It is based on Debugging Book Stack concept.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

In June I reported passing 15,000 visits / month mark and today from Google Analytics I see the passing of 20,000 visits / month mark:

At the time of this writing Google Analytics reports the higher number of visits than StatPress Wordpress plugin (14,653 visits / month) but this is probably due to the fact that Analytics counts visits for Russian version, portal and forum too. At the same time StatPress shows more page views for English blog alone than Analytics and the overall projected page views number is close to 1,000,000 / year (not including feeds):

One thing is certain is that the number of visitors has doubled since the beginning of this year. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

CDA Patterns translated by Heejune Kim also appear on the new MSDN blog called !analyze -v (Korean version).

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Thanks to Roberto Farah who blogged about .cmdtree command I was able to create the first version of cmdtree.txt for Crash Dump Analysis Checklist to include common commands that I use. It can be found here:

CMDTREE.TXT for .cmdtree WinDbg command

The link to the file was also added to:

http://www.windbg.org/

Here is the screenshot of it:

It is useful for complex commands including command sequences and scripts. You can also include special guidelines and reminders as well. In the latter cases you can specify empty command or output something you prefer with .echo, for example command templates to fill manually.

This seems to be similar to EasyDbg. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

“Crash dumps are fossils” 

Here is the draft TOC for the previously announced book Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators and Support Engineers (Windows Edition) which I’m co-authoring with Thomas Monahan, a Lead Escalation Engineer at Citrix Systems:

Table of Contents

 - Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Opentask plans to publish full-color children’s book series called “Baby Turing”:

• Title: Baby Turing
• Authors: Alexandra Vostokova, Dmitry Vostokov
• Publisher: Opentask (01 November 2008)
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 21.6
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-26-1
• Paperback: 16 pages

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

“Crash dumps are fossils” of computations.

Thomas Monahan and Dmitry Vostokov, Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators and Support Engineers (Chapter 1: The Origin of Crash Dumps)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -