[erlang-questions] Creating a diagnostic memory dump of live erlang VM

[Vladimir Ralev]

>From what I've seen the crashdump doesn't really have any of the objects in
the memory. If I have a string stuck in some mailbox or even just state
inside a gen_server process, can I see it?


On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Geoff Cant <nem@REDACTED> wrote:

> Provided you're prepared to take down the node, you can
> erlang:halt("crashdump") and you'll get a dump of memory, heaps, tables,
> ... - erl_crash.dump file.
>
> You can view this in a web browser with crashdump_viewer.
>
> Crashdump debugging is unfortunate, but extremely useful. I use it on all
> my production systems.
>
> -G
>
> > On 18/02/2014, at 16:00, Vladimir Ralev <vladimir.ralev@REDACTED>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hello all,
> >
> > As a Java developer I really miss being able to create a "heap dump" of
> a live Erlang VM where I can see the objects in each process and the
> current process stack variables/trace. I realise there is no java-like heap
> in Erlang but there are the processes, mailboxes, stacks, file handles,
> sockets, ets and so on.
> >
> > In Java we can also use query tools to search the heaps for specific
> identifying strings/numbers/timestamps to find a graph of related objects.
> You can go find objects by type or find the stack variables for given
> thread. It would be very useful for understanding the system in production
> and diagnose issues.
> >
> > Would it be possible to have something like this in Erlang or it is
> fundamentally not allowed?
> > _______________________________________________
> > erlang-questions mailing list
> > erlang-questions@REDACTED
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>
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