Software Diagnostics Library

God Bless the Debugger and his relations and keep us in our proper winstations!

18th century English verse

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Do we need to debug, really? (Selling the Debug Ethic¹)

Whilst debugging leads to wealth
and will keep you in good health,
so its best to be contented with your bugs.

Debug, boys, debug and be contented,
As long as you’ve enough to buy a computer.
The man, you may rely, will be wealthy by and by,
If he’ll only put his finger to the debugger.

Harry Clifton (1824-1872)

¹Bugtated the title of the book I’m reading now and a song from it: Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Have you ever noticed some pessimism on the faces of the prominent debuggers?

You will debug like a dog for no good reason.

Ernest Hemingway, Notes on the Next Debugging

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

When looking for the shortest book titles found this little book with a buzzing bug on its cover: Cdb!

CDB also stands for Console DeBugger from Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows. It can be used in place of WinDbg for user space targets if you don’t like graphical interface or when GUI interferes with debugging.

I’m ordering it now to teach my son symbols! Although I should write my own book for OpenTask Baby Turing series.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Treat yourself, your family and friends with this selection of gifts from OpenTask store:

The perfect binary gift for your family and friends

The perfect gift for software engineers

The perfect gift for job hunters

The perfect coffee table book

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Domenico Scarlatti 555 binary form sonatas are an ideal background complement to a static memory dump analysis activity. Endless thread transitions between user and kernel spaces. A memory dump in front of my eyes in WinDbg window becomes live and software behavior patterns are literally heard (a spiking blocked thread trying to get a lock finally gets its and gradually descends from one module to another to rise again touching a kernel space ceiling and abruptly disappears from the memory landscape reborn in another thread form).

Domenico Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas (Complete)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Five volumes of cross-disciplinary Anthology (dubbed by the author “The Summa Memorianica”) lay the foundation of the scientific discipline of Memoretics (study of computer memory snapshots and their evolution in time) that is also called Memory Dump and Software Trace Analysis.ca

The 5th volume contains revised, edited, cross-referenced, and thematically organized selected DumpAnalysis.org blog posts about crash dump, software trace analysis and debugging written in February 2010 - October 2010 for software engineers developing and maintaining products on Windows platforms, quality assurance engineers testing software on Windows platforms, technical support and escalation engineers dealing with complex software issues, and security researchers, malware analysts and reverse engineers. The fifth volume features:

- 25 new crash dump analysis patterns
- 11 new pattern interaction case studies (including software tracing)
- 16 new trace analysis patterns
- 7 structural memory patterns
- 4 modeling case studies for memory dump analysis patterns
- Discussion of 3 common analysis mistakes
- Malware analysis case study
- Computer independent architecture of crash analysis report service
- Expanded coverage of software narratology
- Metaphysical and theological implications of memory dump worldview
- More pictures of memory space and physicalist art
- Classification of memory visualization tools
- Memory visualization case studies
- Close reading of the stories of Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson’s observational patterns
- Fully cross-referenced with Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4

Product information:

• Title: Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 5
• Author: Dmitry Vostokov
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 22.86 x 15.24

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Opentask (10 December 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-96-4

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Opentask (10 December 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-97-1

Back cover features memory space art image Hot Computation: Memory on Fire.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

As the Year of Dump Analysis 0×7DA (2010) comes closer to the end and the DeBugging decade starts 0×7DB (2011) soon we organize Debugging Joke Competition with the results announced on the 1st of January, 2011 (if Internet works). Please send your jokes using this contact form:

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/contact

Winners get signed (by Dr. DebugLove) copies of Dr. Debugalov book and the forthcoming full color coffee table book Spikes, Hangs, Crashes, Leaks and Dumps of Imagination: The Art of the Debugging Art.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Just came up with this one for a starter:

Q. Why is the execution of this program so stable? A. Because there is a breakpoint at every instruction.

For those from countries in the past socialist camp like Soviet Union it might appear bugtated from a joke I heard from one Moscow State University mathematics professor when I was a student:

“Q. Why is the Communist Party course always straight? A. Because there is an inflection at every point.”

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

I’m pleased to announce that MDAA, Volume 4 is available in PDF format:

www.dumpanalysis.org/Memory+Dump+Analysis+Anthology+Volume+4

It features:

- 15 new crash dump analysis patterns
- 13 new pattern interaction case studies
- 10 new trace analysis patterns
- 6 new Debugware patterns and case study
- Workaround patterns
- Updated checklist
- Fully cross-referenced with Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3
- Memory visualization tutorials
- Memory space art

Its table of contents is available here:

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/MDAA/MDA-Anthology-V4-TOC.pdf

Paperback and hardcover versions should be available in a week or two. I also started working on Volume 5 that should be available in December.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

On the value of study and perseverance. It all started with dumb 0xc0000005 (resulted in a dump) and ended up with 5 volumes of Summa Memorianica (Memory Dump Analysis Anthology):

The Dumb 0x.

Albertus Magnus said of Thomas Aquinas

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

This is an image fragment from the front cover of the forthcoming Debugged! MZ/PE December issue:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

A Momentary Lapse of Computation.

Pink Floyd, A Momentary Lapse of Reason

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Inherit a fortune - To get a postmortem artifact like a crash dump.

Examples:

- My program died!
- Did you inherit a fortune?
- Oh, yeah!

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

My April fool’s joke about the 5th dump type partially came true. I’ve just noticed the new tab “Silent Process Exit” in gflags.exe on my W2K8 R2 server:

The registry keys corresponding to settings are:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \CurrentVersion \ SilentProcessExit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SilentProcessExit \ TestDefaultDebugger64
DumpType (DWORD) 0x88

I continue my investigation and report more later.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Exploring the destiny theme of !analyze -vostokov further. Suddenly it came to me today that my initials DV are the same as initials of Debugging Virtuoso It might be also Debugging Vanity as well…

With fix-privet,
Dr. DebugLove

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Crash Dump is a double buzzword.

Dmitry Vostokov

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

A few days ago I was in a hotel bar invited to celebrate an event. Later that night we were trying to sing songs and I came up with a few stanzas. Today I finished the composition:

Solution Number One.
Bang, Bang, Bang…

Solution Number Two.
Poo, Poo, Poo…

Solution Number Three.
Wee, Wee, Wee…

Solution Number Four.
Oh, Oh, Oh…

Solution Number Five.
Ay, Ay, Ay…

Solution Number Six.
Fix, Fix, Fix!

I’ll try to add some music later on…

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Computer software is said to be simple and predictable as any mechanism ^(*). We can debug it, we can completely trace what it is doing. It seems rational to us. Let’s then label it as Conscious. On the outside there is an irrational human being who did program that software. Let’s then label that person’s mind as Unconscious. What about hardware and body? They form parts of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction or Interface).

(*) Is there any life inside Windows?

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -