If broken it is, fix it you should

Using the powers of the debugger to solve the problems of the world - and a bag of chips    by Tess Ferrandez, ASP.NET Escalation Engineer (Microsoft)
Tess Ferrandez
I work as a developer evangelist at Microsoft, and my job is to help developers make the most of their skills on the MS stack.

In this blog I share tips on anything from debugging and troubleshooting to development on platforms like Windows, Web, Windows Phone and Kinect. And also some random tidbits about computing and my life at MS.


Thanks for visiting my blog

@TessFerrandez

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.NET Debugging Demos - Information and setup instructions

MSDN Blogs > If broken it is, fix it you should > .NET Debugging Demos - Information and setup instructions

.NET Debugging Demos - Information and setup instructions

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4 Feb 2008 4:12 AM
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.NET Debugging Demos

This is a series of debugging demos aimed to help you get some hands on experience in debugging the most common types of Hang/performance, memory and crash scenarios in .net applications.

The demos are written in ASP.NET which means that you do need IIS and .net framework 2.0 installed on the development machine where you install the demos.

Each new demo will have a set of instructions on how to get started but the lab instructions are deliberately kept very brief in order to give you the most chance to explore on your own.  Hints will be available for each demo in case you get stuck.

New demos will be published on http://blogs.msdn.com/Tess as time permits (I am planning to release one new lab per week).

All demos will use the same web site so there is only one application to install for all demos.

Note:  These demos will cause high CPU usage, high memory consumption and crashes, so make sure that you are only installing these demos on development machines where no one else will be bothered by the system hanging or the web server crashing.

Installation

1. Download the demo site (attached to this post) and unzip the files to a folder on your harddrive. (Rev: just uploaded a new version that shouldn't require 3.5)

2. Set up a new virtual directory in IIS called BuggyBits

3. Browse to the default site http://localhost/BuggyBits/default.htm to make sure that you set up the vdir correctly.

4. Browse to the Company info site http://localhost/BuggyBits/CompanyInformation.aspx to make sure that you can view aspx pages correctly.

5. Download and install the debugging tools for windows from http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

6. Run the InternetConnections.reg file by double-clicking it to change the number of outgoing connections you can make to the same site in Internet Explorer (note: any registry modification are done at your own risk, if you feel uncomfortable with this you can view the regfile in notepad and make the changes manually)

7. Install tinyget (comes with the IIS6.0 resource kit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840671 ) we will be using this for stressing some of the pages in order to produce hangs and memory leaks.

Terminology and tools 

Each demo/lab will assume that you are familiar with the following:

 

Windbg Debugger installed with the debugging tools for windows.

By default this will be installed in the “debuggers directory” c:\program files\debugging tools for windows
Adplus Script for automating taking memory dumps, also installed in the debuggers directory
Debuggers directory Typically c:\program files\debugging tools for windows
SOS Extension for managed/.net debugging. 

Comes with the framework and exists in the Framework directory (usually C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727) for simplicity you can copy sos.dll to the debuggers directory.
Loading SOS Loading SOS in windbg can be done by running .load <path to sos>\sos.dll at the windbg command line, or by running .loadby sos mscorwks (which will load it from the framework directory).  If sos is copied to the windbg directory you can simply type .load sos
Setting up symbols Symbols are needed for native/non-dotnet debugging and for viewing the non-dotnet parts of the stack. See http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/archive/2005/12/05/why-do-i-get-weird-function-names-on-my-stack-a-discussion-on-symbols.aspx for more info.  To set up the symbol path in windbg you run

  .symfix c:\mycache 
  .reload

where c:\mycache is where it will store the local copies of the cached symbols.  If you choose to save workspace information when asked in windbg, this symbol path will be saved for the next debugging session.

Tinyget “TinyGet 5.2 (TinyGet.exe) is a command-line Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client that supports multiple threads and looping. You can use TinyGet to test or to troubleshoot HTTP client-to-server communication. By using TinyGet, you can customize your test request by configuring many different factors, including the authentication method, the HTTP version, and the output format. You can also use scripts that specify looping and multithreading.”

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840671 for more info.

Some familiarity with the sos commands and windbg is also useful. The following articles may be useful to use as reference material:

Install Windbg

Getting started - Part I

Getting started - Part II

Advanced commands

Available Labs:

Lab instructions Lab walkthrough
.NET Debugging Demos Lab 1: Hang Walkthrough 
.NET Debugging Demos Lab 2: Crash Walkthrough
.NET Debugging Demos Lab 3: Memory Walkthrough
.NET Debugging Demos Lab 4: High CPU hang Walkthrough
.NET Debugging Demos Lab 5: Crash Walkthrough
.NET Debugging Demos Lab 6: Memory Leak Walkthrough
.NET Debugging Demos Lab 7: Memory Leak Walkthrough

 

 

Attachment: BuggyBits.zip
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Comments
  • If broken it is, fix it you should
    4 Feb 2008 4:23 AM

    This is the first in a series of about 10 labs on .NET debugging. The lab will use a site called BuggyBits,

  • Pedro
    4 Feb 2008 2:56 PM

    FYI - This mentions that the code requires .Net 2.0, but I had to install 3.5 to get the Featured Products page to load.

  • 4 Feb 2008 3:32 PM

    Thanks for pointing that out Pedro,

    The actual app doesn't make use of any 3.5 specific stuff so if you want to you can safely remove any using statements for System.Linq and similar and any portions of the web.config that make use of 3.5 dlls. I will try to remove any such references and upload a new version as soon as possible that doesnt require 3.5

    I created the sample in 2008 and didnt think about the references to 3.5 that were added by default. Sorry bout that

  • Michael
    5 Feb 2008 11:19 PM

    Where I can find the InternetConnections.reg ?

    there is no link in your post

  • 6 Feb 2008 1:52 AM

    Hi Michael,

    It should be in the zip file.

    /Tess

  • If broken it is, fix it you should
    6 Feb 2008 8:18 AM

    Earlier this week I published the first .NET Debugging Demos Lab. If you haven't downloaded and tried

  • If broken it is, fix it you should
    8 Feb 2008 6:52 AM

    It was nice to see that so many people downloaded the demo site already and checked out the lab instructions

  • Essam
    10 Feb 2008 10:25 AM

    I think this will gonna be the seed for a book :)

  • If broken it is, fix it you should
    11 Feb 2008 8:52 AM

    Hi all, I realize that you probably haven't all had a chance to look at the Crash lab yet, considering

  • baal
    13 Feb 2008 12:54 AM

    great, i will make it chinese.

  • If broken it is, fix it you should
    15 Feb 2008 9:10 AM

    TGIF, almost time for the weekend... but before you leave, here is lab 3. Todays debugging puzzle will

  • 25 Feb 2008 11:19 AM

    Is the zipfile still available??

    It seems to can't be downloaded!!

    Such a great lab that I can't just let it go!!

  • 25 Feb 2008 11:39 AM

    The zipfile can't seem to be downloaded !!!

  • 26 Feb 2008 2:25 AM

    The zip file should still be available and I just tried downloading it a moment ago and then it worked fine so i suspect there might have been a temporary glitch yesterday.

  • If broken it is, fix it you should
    5 Mar 2008 5:20 AM

    Last week I published a debugging challenge for Lab 5. It was really interesting to see the results and

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