Software Diagnostics Library

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 -

Paperback edition of Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2 is finally available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Search Inside is also available on Amazon. In addition, I updated the list of recommended books:

Listmania! Crash Dump Analysis and Debugging

Hardcover edition will be available on Amazon and B&N in 2-3 weeks.

- 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

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Although complex OS and computer systems are designed to never stop they actually do:

“The only sure thing about” computation “is that it will” stop.

Bret Harte, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, The Luck of Roaring Camp

- 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 -

“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 -

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

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2: Table of Contents

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I recently started reading a book written by Peter Watson “Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud” where he points to common tripartite view of intellectual history. Reflecting on it, I also came up with my own view about the history of debugging. The main three ideas are:

- Forward debugging

Conventional debugging where an engineer starts with initial conditions and during debugging tries to reproduce the problem or see the anomalies on the way to it. Delta debugging also falls into this category.

- Memory dump analysis

Taking memory slices for remote or postmortem analysis. Helps in problem identification, effective and efficient troubleshooting and also in debugging hard to reproduce or non-reproducible bugs.

- Backward debugging

Also called time travel debugging. Although mostly in its early stages of development this debugging method is the future. In the most simple way, but technologically infeasible at the moment, it can be implemented as recording memory dumps in succession with every tick. Currently, to avoid saving redundant information and conserve storage the code is altered to save context dependent information for every processor instruction or high-level programming language statement. Another approach that comes with virtualization is coarse-grained backward debugging where memory and execution state is saved at certain important points or after specified time intervals.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Elaborating on threads in abstract space idea I tried today to apply canonical formalism of classical mechanics. Thread kinematics involves two abstract coordinates q₁ and q₂ which correspond to memory addresses and their dereferenced values respectively. Although these are discrete variables (N), we can generalize them to be continuous (R₊). The motivation lies in the discreteness of physical measurement: if we divide [0,1] interval into 2⁶⁴ sub-intervals we get approximately 5.421e-20 values which are small indeed even by today’s experimental standards. Next we introduce dynamic variables called v₁ and v₂ which correspond to the rate of change of an address and the rate of change of a value respectively. These are called generalized velocities (we leave the definition of momenta for the next time). These can also be continualized according to the same line of thought we used for generalized coordinates. So finally we have R₊² x R₊² space. R₊² can be complexificated into the subset of C and we get the subset of C². If we allow negative addresses and values we get full R² x R² space or, after complexification, the full complex C² space which is well-known for its magic in physical theories. If we have N threads we get C²ⁿ space.

Now we can go forward and employ all apparatus of classical physics Just one final remark for now, we need to call the particle: I propose to name it classical μ-memuon.

¹ The founder of Physics of Debugging

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

New cartoon from Narasimha Vedala, Science series, provides great insight into incompleteness of debugging:

Debugalov’s Conjecture… “In every sufficiently complex system there is a bug you cannot debug…”

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Have you ever noticed how software bugs twist together or entwine into a confusing mass of an intricate trap that complicates and confuses debugging? Welcome to Bug Entanglement or just Bugtanglement^[1], the new word inspired by quantum mechanics, see Quantum entanglement for analogy. We don’t see a software bug until an observer makes a measurement… And how uncertain these measurements (memory dumps, for example) are! If an observer interferes, it is not the same system, like we see it from observation, anymore. And once we made our measurement, the software system continues to evolve according to its internal design function which we never know fully and only approximate with our requirements specifications.

Welcome to Quantum Theory of Software Bugs

After writing the last paragraph I did Google search and found that I just rediscovered what was already discovered more than 10 years ago by Bernard Robertson-Dunn:

A Quantum Theory of Software

^[1] Seems I coined yet another word…, Google is silent.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org - 

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

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 -

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 -

In July-August Opentask publisher plans to have its own website. In the mean time here is the additional list of books to be published in the next 5-7 years starting from 2009 onwards:

- Memiotics (ISBN-13: 978-1906717087)

- Voice Recognition: Command and Control (ISBN-13: 978-1906717094)

- Memory Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach (ISBN-13: 978-1906717117)

- Deep Down C++ (ISBN-13: 978-1906717124)

- Management Bits: An Anthology from Reductionist Manager (ISBN-13: 978-1906717131)

- Classical, Quantum and Nonlinear Memoretics (ISBN-13: 978-1906717186)

- Crash Dump: A Software Engineering Autobiography (ISBN-13: 978-1906717193)

- Memoidealism: A New Kind of Philosophy (ISBN-13: 978-1906717209)

including 10-volume edition of Software Engineering Notebooks:

- Software Engineering Notebooks, Volume 1 (ISBN-13: 978-1906717148)

Details will be announced later on the publisher’s website.

Note: the book about voice recognition stands apart from the others. This is actually the title of the first book I wanted to write 5 years ago.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I’m thinking big for a full-color book to celebrate the forthcoming anniversary of Memory Dump Analysis Anthology. Preliminary details:

• Title: Encyclopedia of Crash Dump Analysis Patterns
• Author: Dmitry Vostokov
• Publisher: Opentask (15 April 2009)
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.0
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-21-6
• Paperback: 400 pages

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

There are currently 86 patterns in 67 groups and more are coming. I’m working the first two weeks in July to classify them. The classification scheme(s) should appear around 15th of July.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Analysis of computer memory snapshots (memory dumps) and their evolution is the domain of memoretics. Computer memory semiotics (memiotics or memosemiotics) is the branch of memoretics that studies the interpretation of computer memory, its meaning, signs and symbols.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -     

Looking at memory dumps every day and writing about them has an unfortunate implication: every state of the world looks like a gigantic memory dump to me. Everything is memory and every state is memory dump. The current state of the world is an infinite (or an immense) number of memuons^*. Infinite can be any cardinal number greater or equal to that of natural numbers. In any case we can say it is N bits where this number is either finite or ∞. Therefore we have 2^N possible memory states (S). The set of possible transitions between them (S -> S) has the number of 2^N ^ 2^N elements. Which is the memory itself and we have transitions between its states too. Ad infinitum we have a limiting process from which arises the perceived flow of events. Anyway there is much to elaborate here. I’ll come back to this later.

(*) Memuon is an indivisible entity similar to a bit of information.

This is my current philosophy I’m dead serious.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -