On debugging in a parallel system

In this paper a description is given of a partly implemented parallel debugger for the Twente University Multicomputer (TUMULT). The system's basic method for exchange of data is message passing. Experience has learned that most programming errors in application software are made in calls to the kernel and the interprocess communication. The debugger is intended to be used for locating bugs at this level in the application software. It is assumed that basic blocks of the debuggee can be debugged using a traditional sequential sourcelevel debugger

Out-Of-Place debugging: a debugging architecture to reduce debugging interference

Context. Recent studies show that developers spend most of their programming time testing, verifying and debugging software. As applications become more and more complex, developers demand more advanced debugging support to ease the software development process. Inquiry. Since the 70's many debugging solutions were introduced. Amongst them, online debuggers provide a good insight on the conditions that led to a bug, allowing inspection and interaction with the variables of the program. However, most of the online debugging solutions introduce \textit{debugging interference} to the execution of the program, i.e. pauses, latency, and evaluation of code containing side-effects. Approach. This paper investigates a novel debugging technique called \outofplace debugging. The goal is to minimize the debugging interference characteristic of online debugging while allowing online remote capabilities. An \outofplace debugger transfers the program execution and application state from the debugged application to the debugger application, both running in different processes. Knowledge. On the one hand, \outofplace debugging allows developers to debug applications remotely, overcoming the need of physical access to the machine where the debugged application is running. On the other hand, debugging happens locally on the remote machine avoiding latency. That makes it suitable to be deployed on a distributed system and handle the debugging of several processes running in parallel. Grounding. We implemented a concrete out-of-place debugger for the Pharo Smalltalk programming language. We show that our approach is practical by performing several benchmarks, comparing our approach with a classic remote online debugger. We show that our prototype debugger outperforms by a 1000 times a traditional remote debugger in several scenarios. Moreover, we show that the presence of our debugger does not impact the overall performance of an application. Importance. This work combines remote debugging with the debugging experience of a local online debugger. Out-of-place debugging is the first online debugging technique that can minimize debugging interference while debugging a remote application. Yet, it still keeps the benefits of online debugging ( e.g. step-by-step execution). This makes the technique suitable for modern applications which are increasingly parallel, distributed and reactive to streams of data from various sources like sensors, UI, network, etc

Execution replay and debugging

As most parallel and distributed programs are internally non-deterministic -- consecutive runs with the same input might result in a different program flow -- vanilla cyclic debugging techniques as such are useless. In order to use cyclic debugging tools, we need a tool that records information about an execution so that it can be replayed for debugging. Because recording information interferes with the execution, we must limit the amount of information and keep the processing of the information fast. This paper contains a survey of existing execution replay techniques and tools.Comment: In M. Ducasse (ed), proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Automated Debugging (AADebug 2000), August 2000, Munich. cs.SE/001003

OPR

The ability to reproduce a parallel execution is desirable for debugging and program reliability purposes. In debugging (13), the programmer needs to manually step back in time, while for resilience (6) this is automatically performed by the the application upon failure. To be useful, replay has to faithfully reproduce the original execution. For parallel programs the main challenge is inferring and maintaining the order of conflicting operations (data races). Deterministic record and replay (R&R) techniques have been developed for multithreaded shared memory programs (5), as well as distributed memory programs (14). Our main interest is techniques for large scale scientific (3; 4) programming models

Distributed debugging and tumult

A description is given of Tumult (Twente university multicomputer) and its operating system, along with considerations about parallel debugging, examples of parallel debuggers, and the proposed debugger for Tumult. Problems related to debugging distributed systems and solutions found in other distributed debuggers are discussed. The following are the main features of the debugger: it is event based, using a monitor for intercepting these events; record and reply are the main debugging techniques; preprocessing of events is done by programmable filters; the user interface is graphical, using grouping as the main abstraction mechanism. Parts of the debugger, as well as initial versions of the global and local event managers, have been implemented. A slow serial link between the front-end processor and the Tumult system has been replaced by a fast SCSI communication link. The user interface is partly textual, partly graphical. The languages used to implement the debugger are Modula-2 and C. The X Window System and OSF/Motif are used for the graphical user interfac

Interactive message debugger for parallel message passing programs using Lam-Mpi

Many complex and computation intensive problems can be solved efficiently using parallel programs on a network of processors. One of the most widely used software platforms for such cluster computing is LAM-MPI. To aid develop robust parallel programs using LAM-MPI we need efficient debugging tools. The challenges in debugging parallel programs are unique and different from those of sequential programs. Unfortunately available parallel debuggers do not address these challenges adequately; This thesis introduces IDLI, a parallel message debugger for LAM-MPI, designed on the concepts of multi-level debugging. IDLI provides a new paradigm for distributed debugging while avoiding many of the pitfalls of present tools of its genre. Through its powerful yet customizable query mechanism, adequate data abstraction, granularity, user-friendly interface, and a fast novel technique to simultaneously replay and sequentially debug one or more processes from a distributed application, IDLI provides an effective environment for debugging parallel LAM-MPI programs

Debugging tasked Ada programs

The applications for which Ada was developed require distributed implementations of the language and extensive use of tasking facilities. Debugging and testing technology as it applies to parallel features of languages currently falls short of needs. Thus, the development of embedded systems using Ada pose special challenges to the software engineer. Techniques for distributing Ada programs, support for simulating distributed target machines, testing facilities for tasked programs, and debugging support applicable to simulated and to real targets all need to be addressed. A technique is presented for debugging Ada programs that use tasking and it describes a debugger, called AdaTAD, to support the technique. The debugging technique is presented together with the use interface to AdaTAD. The component of AdaTAD that monitors and controls communication among tasks was designed in Ada and is presented through an example with a simple tasked program