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

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 18:56, Heikki Linnakangas
<heikki(dot)linnakangas(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
> On 22.11.2010 19:47, Robert Haas wrote:
>>
>> I am as conservative about back-patching as anybody here, but
>> debugging on Windows is not an easy thing to do, and I strongly
>> suspect we are going to point people experiencing crashes on Windows
>> to this code whether it's part of our official distribution or not.
>
> This whole thing makes me wonder: is there truly no reliable, simple method
> to tell Windows to create a core dump on crash, without writing custom code
> for it. I haven't seen one, but I find it amazing if there isn't. We can't
> be alone with this.

You can do it without custom code but it's quite hard. And AFAIK you
need to install the debugger tools package from microsoft (separate
download, and not something you'll normally find on a system).

There is DrWatson and the Error Reporting service you can use.
DrWatson is made for interactive programs (or was the last time I
looked at it). The error reporting service requires setting up a local
error reporting service and configure it for reports, if you want them
sent anywhere other than to Microsoft. Neither one of them is a
particularly good choie. The minidumps Craig's patch does are a lot
more useful.

We intentionally *disable* drwatson, because it's part of what pops up
an error message you have to click Ok on before your server will
continue running...

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/