Building a Better Backtrace: Techniques for Postmortem Program Analysis

Ben Liblit and Alex Aiken

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/CSD-02-1203

2002

This publication is archived. It is kept only for reference purposes, so it is no longer being updated and may not meet accessibility standards. If you need this content in a different format, please email webteam@eecs.berkeley.edu.

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2002/Archive/CSD-02-1203.pdf

After a program has crashed, it can be difficult to reconstruct why the failure occurred, or what actions led to the error. We propose a family of analysis techniques that use the evidence left behind by a failed program to build a time line of its possible actions from launch through termination. Our design can operate with zero run time instrumentation, or can flexibly incorporate a wide variety of artifacts such as stack traces and event logs for increased precision. Efficient demand-driven algorithms are provided, and the approach is well suited for incorporation into interactive debugging support tools.

BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Liblit:CSD-02-1203,
    Author= {Liblit, Ben and Aiken, Alex},
    Title= {Building a Better Backtrace: Techniques for Postmortem Program Analysis},
    Year= {2002},
    Month= {Oct},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2002/5763.html},
    Number= {UCB/CSD-02-1203},
    Abstract= {After a program has crashed, it can be difficult to reconstruct why the failure occurred, or what actions led to the error. We propose a family of analysis techniques that use the evidence left behind by a failed program to build a time line of its possible actions from launch through termination. Our design can operate with zero run time instrumentation, or can flexibly incorporate a wide variety of artifacts such as stack traces and event logs for increased precision. Efficient demand-driven algorithms are provided, and the approach is well suited for incorporation into interactive debugging support tools.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Liblit, Ben 
%A Aiken, Alex 
%T Building a Better Backtrace: Techniques for Postmortem Program Analysis
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2002
%@ UCB/CSD-02-1203
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2002/5763.html
%F Liblit:CSD-02-1203