Re: Availability of kdb

From: Matt D. Robinson (yakker@alacritech.com)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 18:05:57 EST


Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > >
> > > What would a debugger have done?
> >
> > Let the end user give me essential answers on what was happening at the failure
> > point. Think of it as a crash dump tool with extra controls
>
> Sure. I just don't see many end-users single-stepping through interrupt
> handlers etc.
>
> But yes, there probably are a few.
>
> But problems that tend to be hard to debug are things that don't happen
> all the time. Or require special timing to happen. And I don't think
> you'll find that those are very easy to attach to with a debugger either.
> So the guy at the debugger end has to be really good.
>
> Basically, I'd hate to depend on that.

Then why not allow more complex post-failure analysis tools into the
kernel as an option to debuggers? I agree that debugging should not
act as a crutch for poor design up front, but at the same time, once
you ship a product, you can't just ask the customer to "drop down into
the debugger and give me a stack trace". If the system doesn't save
the crash state for you, you might as well wave a magic wand over the
system or pray that someone can read an Oops report.

--Matt
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