NAME: Programming Help

QUESTION: What debugging tools are there in linux?

Checkout this publication for a recent survey:

http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/vis//resources/lists/dhl.html#Lueke-2006-SSD

PROGRAM DEBUGGING AND PERFORMANCE TOOLS
=======================================
gdb          to attach to a running program:
                 $> gdb progname pid
ddd          graphical debugger
totalview    graphical debugger
gprof        where a program spends its time
strace       watch all syscalls a program makes
             if you didn't write the program, this
               is probably your best bet
time         summarize system resource usage (real,user,sys)
gcov         profiling tool .. frequency of lines executed
             (example: 1.  gcc -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage x.c
                       2.  a.out
                       3.  gcov x.c
                       4.  cat x.c.gcov)
memprof      memory profiling (gui)
valgrind     memory debugger
ccmalloc     memory profiling
Electric Fence (compile with -lefence) - use for memory overruns
leak-analyze & LeakCheck - memory usage debugger
mpatrol & mptrace - debugging for dynamically allocated memory

SYSTEM PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS TOOLS
=================================
vmstat       virtual memory statistics
free         display free and used memory
top          disply top cpu processes
files in /proc  files used as interface to kernel data structures
                examples: cpuinfo,stat
procinfo     display system status - gathered from /proc
ps           report process status
ksysguard    Task Manager and Performance Monitor
             like windows performance monitor
             (process table and histogram of system load, memory)
sysstat
    sar      system activity information
    iostat   CPU and I/O stats
    mpstat   Processor related stats

NETWORK
=======
ping         send echo request to network host
netstat      print net connections, routing tables, etc.
traceroute   print the route to a network host




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