Debugging in the Real-time Systems with DTrace

In order to bebug a system, one requires information from both offline and run time slates of the system. In more cases the information required to trace a problem does not correspond to the information available from the output provided by the system. Thus, additional probes must be inserted in order to achieve the required information. Herein lays the problem since the probing could perturb the system leading to side effects known as Heisenbugs. One major reason for the occurrence of these bugs is due to lack of information a developer has on the effect of probing. Thus, this research will be interested in analysis of hardware and software probing techniques to detect the impact of probing. QNX Software Co. is a provider of real time operating systems and related tools. Debugging support is a critical element of the tool support. Thus, the analysis of the probe effect of debuggers is much appreciated by QNX.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Sebastian Fischmeister

Student:

Thilan Costa

Partner:

QNX Software Co.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

University of Waterloo