OS/2 Shareware BBS: WPS_PM/WPS_PM.zip/pc2v210.zip/TrapInfo.doc

Text File | 1999-07-01 | 8KB | 144 lines

******************************************************************************
                       Problem Determination Instructions

                   PC/2 - Program Commander/2 Version 2.10 for
           IBM OS/2 2.x, OS/2 WARP, WARP Srv. SMP Presentation Manager
                    Copyright (C) by Roman Stangl July, 1999

                               Version 2.10 Draft
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In order to help improving PC/2, I would please you to read the following
very carefully. This information may help me to locate possible problems,
and hopefully will allow me to fix it. As you might not be able to access
the online instructions while PC/2 is having a problem, the instructions
are copied hereinto:

PC/2 supports 2 independent ways of reporting unrecoverable errors. One
method is that all unrecoverable errors are appended to a file PC2.TRP, the
other method is to dump the registers and process context to disk when an
unrecoverable error occurred. The later one is valid systemwide once
activated and can only be deactivated after the next reboot again.

PC/2 will append to a file named PC2.TRP, which is located in the directory
PC2.EXE is located, whenever it detects an unrecoverable error (that is an
access violation exception or commonly called a "trap"). This file will not
only contain some information that would be also logged by SUPPRESSPOPUPS
(though you can disable this setting), but also a dump of the stack and the
sequence of functions called by walking up the chain of stack frames. PC/2
will terminate eventually after this file has been appended.

Whenever you detect the PC2.TRP has been created or is growing, I would
appreciate it very much if you can ZIP and E-mail me that archive MIME-64
encoded together with information which version of PC/2 you were running.
The file PC2.TRP should allow me to find most if not all unrecoverable
errors.

Despite of the DUMPPROCESS and SUPPRESSPOPUPS settings in your CONFIG.SYS,
which wouldn't record and dump information anyway for a default installation,
PC/2 can activate these settings in a way dumps will be always taken when PC/2
experiences a problem or you request it (by the option "Diagnostics").
These dumps contain information that will hopefully help me to diagnose and
fix problems, that have not shown up during the extensive tests. I said
hopefully, because this is not a trivial task (a detailed problem description
will therefore be appreciated too), and I have not much experience in that
area yet. However, let's be optimistic and see how to handle dumps.

Note: Please don't take dumps without contacting me prior, because the dump is
mostly useless except for some recent OS/2 fixpacks, and it is depending on
the fixpack level (that is, the tools required to read that dump also need to
be downloaded and updated).

PC/2 allows you to take a process dump (which does not terminate PC/2), which
may help me to find bugs and especially hangs. A hang is a situation where
user input is not (currectly) processed for a single application or the
whole system.

The following steps will guide you on taking a PC/2 dump:

   1. To take a dump, just press and hold the CTRL+Key while clicking with
      mouse button 1 onto PC/2's Overview or SessionBar windows and select the
      menuentry Debug->Dump PC/2.

      Note: Taking a process dump may take a few seconds. While the dump is
            taken, your system will be unresponsive to user input. Once a dump
            has been requested, OS/2 will start dumping any process that traps,
            regardless of the previous value of the DUMPPROCESS setting in
            your CONFIG.SYS.

   2. OS/2 will then write a unique file named PDUMP.nnn into the root
      directory of your boot drive, where nnn is an index that is incremented
      each time a new process dump is created.

   3. If there are multiple PDUMP.nnn files, the one with the highest index
      will be the one you have just taken. You can verify this by searching
      for the string PC2 in the dump files.

   4. Please archive the dump file, preferably with InfoZip's ZIP utility, and
      encode it in MIME-64 format (only this format please), if you are going
      to send me the dump via E-mail.

   5. As the tool to read the dumps is dependent on the level of OS/2 the dump
      was created with, please drop me a note so that I can verify I can read
      the dump. Most likely we will then agree that you send me the dump via
      E-mail.

In addition to take a PC/2 process dump manually, such dumps are also
generated by OS/2 when a fatal unrecoverable error occurs within PC/2 (OS/2
does not take such dumps by default unless you have specified the DUMPPROCESS
statement in your CONFIG.SYS, PC/2 will request such a dump by default, unless
you have explicitely disabled PC/2's diagnostics).

If a fatal unrecoverable error (e.g. a access violation) occurs, in addition
to the PC/2 process dump, the system error popup will be suppressed and the
information will be added to the file POPUPLOG.OS2 instead (OS/2 will display
a system error popup unless you have specified the SUPPRESSPOPUPS statement
in your CONFIG.SYS, PC/2 will request to replace the system error popup by
logging to this file, unless you have explicitely disabled PC/2's diagnostics):

  1. Due to a fatal unrecoverable error, OS/2 will terminate PC/2 without
     displaying a message. If you note that PC/2 disappears without you having
     selected it to exit, most likely such an error occurred.

  2. OS/2 will then append the trap information to the file named POPUPLOG.OS2
     located in the root of your boot drive. This file is human readable,
     therefore you don't have to archive or encode it when sending it vial
     E-mail (though it does not harm if you prefer to do so).

  3. Please send me this file via E-mail (after prior contacting me please).

In addition to any dump, I need to know exactly which version of the PC/2
modules you are using. PC/2 modules contain the same signature as OS/2
modules, which can be read by running the OS/2 BLDLEVEL utility against these
modules. From an OS/2 commandline please capture the output of the BLDLEVEL
runs (to capture the output by redirection to a file named BuildLvl, you
would enter):

    BLDLEVEL PC2.EXE >BuildLvl
    BLDLEVEL PC2Hook.dll >>BuildLvl
    BLDLEVEL PC2BRes.dll >>BuildLvl
    BLDLEVEL PC2VRes.dll >>BuildLvl
    BLDLEVEL PC2Spool.dll >>BuildLvl
    BLDLEVEL Wps2PC2.dll >>BuildLvl

Please add this information if you report a problem too.

Note: Both, the files POPUPLOG.OS2 and PDUMP.nnn will not be cleared or
      removed automatically. In order to reduce disk space (which is only a
      few kB anyway), you may want to delete these files from time to time.

Note: Unfortunately once PC/2 activates that dumps and fatal unrecoverable
      errors will be appended to PDUMP.nnn and POPUPLOG.OS2, these settings
      will stay active even after PC/2 has terminated.
      This will have the side effect, that once PC/2 has activated these
      setting, all dumps will be saved into PDUMP.nnn and fatal unrecoverable
      errors will be appended to POPUPLOG.OS2 and no longer displayed with a
      system error popup, the applications terminates silently.
      There is now way to limit the activation of these settings to PC/2's
      process only.

Note: Under Warp 4, the file POPUPLOG.OS2 will be written by default,
      regardless of the setting SUPPRESSPOPUPS (if this setting is active, the
      system error popup just won't be displayed).