DLL is also a recursive acronym for DLL List Landscape. OpenTask is going to publish soon the new full color book:
Title: DLL List Landscape: The Art from Computer Memory Space
ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-36-0
More details will be announced tomorrow.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
“The” computer “is the only place where” a crash “comes before” hang.
Anonymous American Saying
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
Because of large book density on my table disasters are inevitable. And it happened a month ago. I spilled coffee. One bottom level book sank like Titanic. The book on top of it which I was browsing at that moment survived heavily damaged:
Recently I noticed that spilled coffee left a mark on one book side. It is clearly visible ”1“ on the picture above.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
“How can you say my” computation “is not a success?” Has it “not for more than sixty” days “got enough to” process “and escaped being” crashed?
Logan Pearsall Smith, Last Words
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
A number of writers expressed their wishes to be a co-author of the forthcoming SF novel Googol Dump. I have selected Dun Bugmons for his name sounding like Dún Laoghaire where I live nearby by walking distance in Monkstown and his surname accidentally reminding me of Bug Monitors. Please join me in congratulating Dun Bugmons!
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
CtxHideEx32 tool has been updated to the version 1.1 and can be downloaded from Citrix support. It now allows a substring search for a window title or class, for example:
CtxHideEx32.exe HIDE "*error" "" OK
As by-product coupled with an optional command line I discovered that it allows to automatically dump any process displaying a message box with an error message in its window title. Here is an example using TestDefaultDebugger64 to simulate an application fault message where the following instance of CtxHideEx32 was setup to dump a process showing WER dialog on Vista:
CtxHideEx32.exe NONE "*Microsoft Windows" "" "C:\kktools\userdump8.1\x64\userdump.exe %d"
We click on a big lightning button:
and then WER dialog appears:
Immediately CtxHideEx32 kicks in and starts dumping the owner process incessantly so you better to dismiss this dialog by choosing something:
We see it was WerFault.exe.
Note: I think I have to amend CtxHideEx32 to make it wait until the spawned command line interpreter finishes its job. Stay tuned.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
Science fiction books are among my favourite. I used to read lots of them (in Russian) during my school and university years. Also I started reading science fiction in English 8 years ago upon my arrival to Ireland and one of Asimov’s books about Foundation was my first English fiction book fully read from cover to cover. Now I want to write something fictional related to memory dump analysis and the notion of 3-dimensional memory dumps is a fascinating idea to exploit:
Googol Dump - a 3D memory dump where the 3rd dimension is a time arrow of computational 2D memory snapshots.
Note: one googol is 10100 and this number of bits is sufficient enough to record the full history of memory snapshots for 64-bit, 128-bit, 256-bit and even 1024-bit computers running thousands of years.
The novel is planned to be published next year (ISBN: 978-1906717322) and is written from the perspective of a debugger.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
This is an example of an almost totally bugtated quotation:
Blue Color “of” Crash.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
This is an example of a complex bugtation:
Bugteriology is the study of bugteria. “It comprises the identification, classification and characterization of” bugterial “species.” Bugteria “are identified by their properties, for example their looks, what” memory dumps “they can” appear in “or not” appear in, “what” bugs “they require for growth, what” effects “they produce, etc. To study morphology, that is the” phenotype “of” bugteria, “a” debugger “is used.”
Virtual Museum of Bacteria, Bacteriology: the study of bacteria
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
I continued thinking about bugteria in memory dumps all the day yesterday and came to the conclusion that the study of crash dump analysis patterns needs its own name and the obvious choice was Bugteriology:
Bugteriology is the study of crash dump analysis patterns (bugteria). Its main subject is identification, classification and characterization of such patterns found in memory dumps (bugterial species).
I initially registered a domain for this purpose (later abandoned) pointing to crash dump analysis and debugging portal but I want to think through this idea and perhaps make it a subdomain of dumpanalysis.org with a page for easy online pattern classification and make it also an online supplement to forthcoming encyclopedia of crash dump analysis patterns.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
Yesterday was one of those days when I was in a good mood thinking about bugs. Suddenly a thought stroke me about the similar sounding words bacterium and bugterium (perhaps because I’m currently reading a theoretical biology book, Essays on Life Itself). I admit that it might be sounding the same only for a non-native English ear though. So the new definition was born:
Bugterium (pl. bugteria) - an instance of a memory dump analysis pattern found in a crash (memory, core) dump file.
Why a bugterium and not a cdarium? The motivation (with a hindsight) lies in the complexity of debugging (and life forms). While a bug is a complex thing (and a beast) and it takes sometimes days or weeks to chase and fix (kill) the one, a bugterium (bacterium) is of relatively smaller complexity and can be easily identified and dealt with by component removal or upgrade (massively killed). From software support perspective remember this bugtation No.14:
Crash dump analysis ”is anticipated with” joy, “performed with” eagerness, “and bragged about forever.”
Although the perceived simplicity of crash dump analysis is deceptive (bugtation No.2):
“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious” crash.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
Paperback edition of Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2 is finally available on Amazon
Listmania! Crash Dump Analysis and Debugging
Hardcover edition will be available on Amazon and B&N in 2-3 weeks.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
Before the advent of virtual machines to Wintel platforms people had to take pictures of bluescreens or even write all data down by hand to fax it:
How easy it is today! You just do Print Screen.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
“On Mind-Body problem and Afterlife: if Mind is merely a computation then what is left is a memory dump in the Body”.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
Reminiscence on a memory dump as an integer:
“The trouble with” memory dumps “is that we have examined only the very small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big” memory dumps, “ones we can’t even begin to think about in any very definite way. So maybe all the action is really inaccessible and we’re just fiddling around. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large” memory dumps “or to look at things in a hundred thousand” memory locations.
Ronald Lewis Graham, quoted in “Computers, Pattern, Chaos and Beauty” by Clifford A. Pickover
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
Crash dumps “have another hypnotic effect. Because they are not immediately understood, they, like certain jokes, are suspected of holding in some sort of magic embrace the secret of” troubleshooting, “or at least some of its more” difficult “parts.”
Scott Milross Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics
- 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 @ 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 -
Exception “is what we see at a glance.”
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -