n2ize
10-01-2010, 01:56 PM
As some of you know by my most demanding job is running a small home network. What makes it so hard is that I am frequently asked to do the impossible. Such as making a program do something that it doesn't do, for which i don;t have the source code and/or is written in a language that I am not familiar with. it takes me a little longer to do the impossible.
However, some requests are not impossible, just difficult. Most of the time because the end users cannot give me a technical explanation of a given problem and are not interested in hearing any technical explanations.
Here is one such problem. I was informed today that one of the Linux desktop systems is running like crap. The system is running fedora 12 and using the GNOME desktop. Apparently there is a widget on the panel which is used for selecting and launching applications. The problem as explained to me is that approximately 5 minutes after the system is up and running that widget stops responding. You can click your mouse on it and nothing happens. I do not know at this point if any of the other widgets on this particular desktop are also affected. Just that this one particular "menu widget" fails after about 5 minutes.
Since it is not easy to reproduce, i.e. when i try it the problem doesn't seem to occur, I was thinking of attaching a debugger, (i.e. gdb) to the panel process(es) and collect data right on up to the point it crashes. This way if I am not there physically the debugger will capture what was going on and what point it crashed (hopefully).
Only problem is that I am not sure which processes I need to attach the debugger to ? Also, is gdb the best choice ? Or should I use "strace" or some other diagnostic app ?
Any suggestions appreciated ?
However, some requests are not impossible, just difficult. Most of the time because the end users cannot give me a technical explanation of a given problem and are not interested in hearing any technical explanations.
Here is one such problem. I was informed today that one of the Linux desktop systems is running like crap. The system is running fedora 12 and using the GNOME desktop. Apparently there is a widget on the panel which is used for selecting and launching applications. The problem as explained to me is that approximately 5 minutes after the system is up and running that widget stops responding. You can click your mouse on it and nothing happens. I do not know at this point if any of the other widgets on this particular desktop are also affected. Just that this one particular "menu widget" fails after about 5 minutes.
Since it is not easy to reproduce, i.e. when i try it the problem doesn't seem to occur, I was thinking of attaching a debugger, (i.e. gdb) to the panel process(es) and collect data right on up to the point it crashes. This way if I am not there physically the debugger will capture what was going on and what point it crashed (hopefully).
Only problem is that I am not sure which processes I need to attach the debugger to ? Also, is gdb the best choice ? Or should I use "strace" or some other diagnostic app ?
Any suggestions appreciated ?