ASP.NET and SOS

I would like to hear from you! I want to know what your thoughts are around the SOS.dll and using it to troubleshoot problems.

Are there functions in the sos.dll that ships with the debugger, that only works with .NET 1.x, that you are missing for your 2.0 troubleshooting?
Are there things you do all the time that you would rather have one command that does it for you? (For example, looking at DataTables and how many columns and rows they have)
What would make troubleshooting easier?
Is there a report that you’d like to see about the status of the process which is currently missing?
Would you like to use DebugDiag instead to troubleshoot .NET issues?
Any others?

Please let me know what your thoughts are and what you think would make it better. I’d really like to hear your thoughts around this debugger extension. I am planning on making an extension that will work with SOS and give more information for ASP.NET and other useful things. And make it so that one DLL will work with all versions of .NET but I would like to hear your thoughts so I can try to make it the best possible.

Published 25 March 08 10:06 by Tom

Filed under: ASP.NET, Debugging, .NET

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# DotNetKicks.com said on March 25, 2008 10:07 AM:

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

# Eric Pearson said on March 25, 2008 11:37 AM:

After working on that sp1 issue with you in support, I would love an easier way to inspect objects: such as DumpObj automatically expanding or formatting datetimes and valuetypes and strings inline so you can get a better view of an object's contents at a glance.

# Gordon Weakliem said on March 25, 2008 11:50 AM:

I do miss !dumpaspnetcache, Tess posted a workaround, but it's not especially fun.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/archive/2006/01/26/asp-net-memory-how-much-are-you-caching-an-example-of-foreach.aspx#1842670

# wisemx said on March 25, 2008 11:59 AM:

At this point I'd say yes, the IIS7 methods.

If more ASP.NET developers see this:

http://mtaulty.com/communityserver/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2004/08/06/4685.aspx

...They may be able to better answer your question. ;-)

# Pawel Pabich said on March 26, 2008 9:24 AM:

It would be great to have UI that lets you browse managed heap but I suppose it is more Windbg than SOS feature request.

# Tom said on March 26, 2008 9:34 AM:

Like what kind of UI? Browse the managed heap as in like graphically? I have had a few ideas around this myself, but what kind of visual were you thinking?

# ASP.NET Debugging said on March 27, 2008 1:26 PM:

So there are a lot of useful commands in sos that you may not know about.  I am going to hit on

# ASP.NET Debugging said on March 31, 2008 1:56 PM:

So we didn't get much more on this one, so I'll go ahead and show how we find out what is going on here. 

# Ron said on April 1, 2008 3:36 PM:

I really miss the -gen option on the dh command. I used the -gen with -stat a lot in the 1.x version of sos.

# Ron said on April 1, 2008 3:47 PM:

I wasn't aware of the !aspxpages command until I read your blog. I can see how it could be extremely beneficial in troubleshooting web apps.

# ASP.NET Debugging said on April 18, 2008 11:34 AM:

So we have a bunch of debugger extensions that we need to use depending on the situation.  So here

# If broken it is, fix it you should said on April 30, 2008 2:27 AM:

This question that I got from a reader is something that I get asked pretty frequently... "I met a small

# daveblack said on June 2, 2009 3:20 PM:

I have downloaded and installed the latest version of the Debugging Tools for Windows (ver. 6.11.0001.404). I've been using WinDBG with SOS and had been getting "Doesn't work in 2.x" messages for most of the SOS commands. I assumed that I should be using the version installed with the Debugging Tools instead of the one with the Framework since that version is the newest and is much larger in size (thinking they've added a bunch of new functionality).

If I load the version of SOS that works with .NET 2.0, it doesn't have the newer commands in it that the version for 1.x does. Thus, I find that if I load the version with .NET 2.0, I get "No export 'commandNameHere' found".

some examples:

GCRef

DumpASPNETCache

DumpDataTables

DumpDynamicAssemblies

DumpHttpRuntime

DumpXmlDocument

SearchStack

CLRUsage

FindDebugModules

FindTable

What is most frustrating is that new commands are being added to the .NET 1.x version but nothing is being done with SOS for .NET 2.0+

Why the disconnect and what is being to provide these newer commands to the .NET 2.0+ version?

TIA

Dave

# Tom said on June 3, 2009 10:28 AM:

Dave,

We are currently working on that exact issue. We are very aware of the disconnect and are working to get that resolved soon.

# daveblack said on June 3, 2009 11:12 AM:

Tom,

Thank you much for your reply : )

1. Is there any general timeframe that the update would be available?

2. Will it be available before the release of VS2010?

3. Would the update be packaged as part of the Debugging Tools for Windows or as a SP for VisualStudio? It is confusing to have the two versions and one of them should be deprecated *or* they should always be kept in sync.

# Tom said on June 3, 2009 12:01 PM:

Dave,

There isn't a timeframe yet, but we hope to have something soon. We are also beginning to talk about doing similar things for 4.0. The way it works is the CLR development team releases the SOS that comes with the framework. Then we work on what we can do on top of that. I am hoping for 4.0 to change it quite a bit but we will see how that works out.

# daveblack said on June 3, 2009 3:34 PM: