Re: Re: Proposed Windows-specific change: Enable crash dumps (like core files)

On 17/12/2010 11:17 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

>> So I'd be happy to have it enabled - given that we want a default.
>
> There is absolutely nothing more frustrating than having a crash dump
> that hasn't got the information you need. Please turn it on by default.

There have to be limits to that, though. dbghelp.dll can dump shared
memory, too - but it's not going to be practical to write or work with
many-gigabyte dumps most of the time, and neither my initial patch nor
Magnus's recent reworking of it ask windbg.dll to include shared memory
in the dump.

It's possible to tell dbghelp.dll to include specific additional memory
ranges, so it may well be worth including specific critical areas within
the shared memory block while omitting the bulk of the buffers. Doing
that safely in an unsafe we're-crashing environment might not be simple,
though, especially if you're not even sure whether you got far into
startup before crashing.

--
Craig Ringer

Tech-related writing at http://soapyfrogs.blogspot.com/