RFR(S): 8074354: tests that intentionally crash the VM can timeout creating a core file

[Staffan Larsen]

> On 12 mar 2015, at 09:35, Thomas Stüfe <thomas.stuefe at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Staffan, 
> 
> you mean the ability to switch between full and partial dumps on windows?

I actually meant the error log improvements :-) But as you say we are off-topic, so let’s leave it.

/Staffan

> 
> Sure, I can do that :) 
> 
> Of course, you would have to add a windows-only switch in addition to Yumins 'CreateCoredumpOnCrash', something like "MiniDumpType=full/partial" or similar, and I can see people objecting because it adds complexity.
> 
> Also, I think we are quite OT by now. We should move these discussions (about order of dumping and whether to allow partial dumps on windows) to a new thread.
> 
> Thomas
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 8:33 AM, Staffan Larsen <staffan.larsen at oracle.com <mailto:staffan.larsen at oracle.com>> wrote:
> 
>> On 11 mar 2015, at 20:58, Thomas Stüfe <thomas.stuefe at gmail.com <mailto:thomas.stuefe at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Staffan,
>> 
>>> As in Staffan L's comments, we need to have a discuss and make final decision for it --- tradeoff.
>> 
>> Given that core files on other platforms are useful even after we write the hotspot error logs, it would probably make sense to have the same mechanism on all platforms as Thomas points out. I haven’t been debugging many windows failures lately so perhaps someone who does can chime in here?
>> 
>>> Personally I prefer a full dump when VM crashes on Windows, which is more helpful. I found minidump not very helpful in most of the cases.
>> 
>> Windows calls all crash dumps “minidumps”. They can however be configured to include more or less information, but even with all the information it is still called a “minidump” (or at least the API for creating them is called that).
>> 
>> 
>> Sorry, my sentence was garbled and not very clear. 
>> 
>> I was referring to the MINIDUMP_TYPE parameter on MiniDumpWriteDump(): in our code base, we used to have a switch to write either full minidumps (with MiniDumpWithFullMemory set) or partial minidumps without full memory info, just the thread stacks. Trade off was minidump size: full memory info made for very large dumps, the partial ones were small.
>> 
>> In practice we found the full dumps often too large and unwieldy, and the partial ones were often useless. So in the end we came to rely on the error logs and put lots of work into improving those.  
> 
> That sounds great - something you are planning to contribute?
> 
> /Staffan
> 
>> 
>> Thomas
>> 
>>  
>> /Staffan
>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
>