Dumping gcov data at runtime - c

I'm using gcov to collect code coverage data for a C project I'm working on. I understand that gcov dumps the code coverage data once the program exits after completion. How do I collect gcov data for long running processes. (say, my program is the kernel of an operating system which runs in a server that never shuts down - and I need to collect code coverage data for it). Is there any way to make gcov dump code coverage data periodically (say, every 1 hour) or upon certain event - how can I trigger gcov dump code coverage data (rather than waiting for gcov to do it after the program terminates)?

Call __gcov_flush() periodically.
This can be done by associating a signal handler:
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
void __gcov_flush();
static void catch_function(int signal) {
__gcov_flush();
}
int main(void) {
if (signal(SIGINT, catch_function) == SIG_ERR) {
fputs("An error occurred while setting a signal handler.\n", stderr);
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
while(1);
}
Compile regularly: gcc sig.c -ftest-coverage -fprofile-arcs
Then toggle (periodic) update by kill -2 process_id

Related

Can lldb inspect what has been written to a file, or the data in an IPC mechanism it has generated/used, at a breakpoint?

Say with this simple code:
#include<stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv){
printf("Hello World!\n");
return 0;
}
After stepping printf("Hello World!\n”); perhaps there’s a command to print that “Hellow World!\n” has been written to STDOUT.
And after return 0 perhaps there’s a command to see the exit codes generated and it will show 0.
Are there such commands or similar in lldb?
LLDB prints the exit status when a process exits:
(lldb) run
Process 76186 launched: '/tmp/a.out' (x86_64)
Process 76186 exited with status = 10 (0x0000000a)
and you can also access it with the SB API's:
(lldb) script lldb.process.GetExitStatus()
10
lldb doesn't have any special knowledge about all the ways a program might read or write data to a pipe, file handle, pty, etc... It also doesn't know how to interpose on file handles and tee-off the output. There's no particular reason it couldn't, but nobody has added that to date.
So you would have to build this yourself. If you know the API your code is using to read and write, you could use breakpoints to observe that - though that might get slow if you are observing a program that reads and writes a lot.

coredump redirect to file

I am invoking make from my C program, which intern executes another program. I am redirecting both the standard out and standard error to a file. However, when the program run by make terminates due to segmentation fault, a core dump is generated and printed to the console (standard out) of the main program that is invoking make.
How can I get around this and not have the core dump show on the console?
The following is my code to invoke make :
int pid = fork();
if(pid==0){
dup2(make_logs, 1);
dup2(make_logs, 2);
close(make_logs);
execvp (args[0],args);
}
Where make_logs is the file opened using 'open'
Thanks
I would try to fix the core dump rather than suppressing the message, but the message about the segmentation fault is being generated by the shell (which detects the exit value of the child and recognize a core dump situation), so you can suppress it by installing your own program that handles the fork() and wait() rather than having the shell do the work.
To suppress the core dump, just use limit coredumpsize 0.
Sample of suppression (sloppy code; you should really be checking for errors):
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
main( int argc, char **argv )
{
int pid;
if( (pid = fork() ) > 0 ) wait( 0 );
else if( pid == 0 ) {
execl( "program-that-cdumps", "program-that-cdumps", 0 );
perror("failed in execl");
} else perror("failed in fork");
}
Read core(5) and signal(7) man pages.
Compile all your programs with gcc -Wall -g. Then use
file core
to understand which binary dumped the core. It probably says something like core dump from foo to tell you that program foo dumped the core. Then, start a post mortem debugger on it:
gdb foo core
and use the common gdb commands (notably bt to backtrace, p to print, etc...).
The message dumped core is given by some shell (or perhaps by make when it is acting like a shell). I don't think that the core file is output to stdout (it is a big binary file).
If you wish to avoid the core (which IMHO is a bad idea, a core dump is a good symptom of something wrong), you could call the setrlimit(2) syscall with RLIMIT_CORE and a 0 limit after your fork and before the execvp. I believe you should not do that (or at least have some way of configuring that setrlimit is not called: sometimes you really need the core dump to debug the problem).
You should fix the problem which gives the core dump, not try to avoid the dumped core message!
If you run make on a user provided Makefile so that the core dump is from a user program, you really want to keep the user informed that a core did happen, so you should keep the core dumped message.

Execute command just before Mac going to sleep

I wrote a C program/LaunchDaemon that checks if my MacBook is at home (connected to my WLAN). If so, it disables my password protection; if not, it enables it.
Easy. But the problem is that when I take my MacBook anywhere else and password protection is disabled, it will wake up without a password protection.
My fix for this would be: enable the password protection every time just before it goes to sleep.
QUESTION: is there any way find out when my Mac is preparing for sleep? Some interupt I can let my program listen to?
You can do it using I/O Kit, check Apple's QA1340: Registering and
unregistering for sleep and wake notifications. You may also want to
analyze the SleepWatcher utility sources or use/integrate for your needs.
From the homepage:
SleepWatcher 2.2 (running with Mac OS X 10.5 to 10.8, source code included)
is a command line tool (daemon) for Mac OS X that monitors sleep, wakeup and
idleness of a Mac. It can be used to execute a Unix command when the Mac or
the display of the Mac goes to sleep mode or wakes up, after a given time
without user interaction or when the user resumes activity after a break or
when the power supply of a Mac notebook is attached or detached. It also can
send the Mac to sleep mode or retrieve the time since last user activity. A
little bit knowledge of the Unix command line is required to benefit from
this software.
I attach below the contents of my C file beforesleep.c which executes some command line commands (in my case shell commands and AppleScript scripts) when a "will sleep" notification is received.
Where you can put your code:
In order to run your code when the mac is going to sleep, just replace the system(...) calls with the code you wish to run.
In my case, I use system() as it allows me to run shell commands passed as strings, but if you prefer to run just C code instead, you can just put your C code there.
How to build it
In order to build this file, I run:
gcc -framework IOKit -framework Cocoa beforesleep.c
Remark
If you are going to use this code, make sure it is always running in background. For example, I have a Cron job which makes sure that this code is always running, and it launches it again in case it is accidentally killed for any reason (although it never happened to me so far). If you are experienced enough, you can find smarter ways to ensure this.
Further info
See this link (already suggested by sidyll) for more details about how this works.
Code template
#include <ctype.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <mach/mach_port.h>
#include <mach/mach_interface.h>
#include <mach/mach_init.h>
#include <IOKit/pwr_mgt/IOPMLib.h>
#include <IOKit/IOMessage.h>
io_connect_t root_port; // a reference to the Root Power Domain IOService
void
MySleepCallBack( void * refCon, io_service_t service, natural_t messageType, void * messageArgument )
{
switch ( messageType )
{
case kIOMessageCanSystemSleep:
IOAllowPowerChange( root_port, (long)messageArgument );
break;
case kIOMessageSystemWillSleep:
system("/Users/andrea/bin/mylogger.sh");
system("osascript /Users/andrea/bin/pause_clockwork.scpt");
IOAllowPowerChange( root_port, (long)messageArgument );
break;
case kIOMessageSystemWillPowerOn:
//System has started the wake up process...
break;
case kIOMessageSystemHasPoweredOn:
//System has finished waking up...
break;
default:
break;
}
}
int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
// notification port allocated by IORegisterForSystemPower
IONotificationPortRef notifyPortRef;
// notifier object, used to deregister later
io_object_t notifierObject;
// this parameter is passed to the callback
void* refCon;
// register to receive system sleep notifications
root_port = IORegisterForSystemPower( refCon, &notifyPortRef, MySleepCallBack, &notifierObject );
if ( root_port == 0 )
{
printf("IORegisterForSystemPower failed\n");
return 1;
}
// add the notification port to the application runloop
CFRunLoopAddSource( CFRunLoopGetCurrent(),
IONotificationPortGetRunLoopSource(notifyPortRef), kCFRunLoopCommonModes );
/* Start the run loop to receive sleep notifications. Don't call CFRunLoopRun if this code
is running on the main thread of a Cocoa or Carbon application. Cocoa and Carbon
manage the main thread's run loop for you as part of their event handling
mechanisms.
*/
CFRunLoopRun();
//Not reached, CFRunLoopRun doesn't return in this case.
return (0);
}

Dump core if SIGSEGV (in C)?

How can I dump the core when my program receives the SIGSEGV signal ? (The server that runs my program has very limited permissions and therefore core dump is disabled by default.)
I have written the following using gcore but I would like to use C functions instead. Can I somehow catch the core and write it to a folder somewhere ?
void segfaulthandler(int parameter)
{
char gcore[50];
sprintf(gcore, "gcore -s -c \"core\" %u", getpid());
system(gcore);
exit(1);
}
int main(void)
{
signal(SIGSEGV, segfaulthandler);
}
Unless there's a hard limit preventing you, you could use setrlimit(RLIMIT_CORE, ...) to increase the softlimit and enable coredumps - this corresponds to running ulimit -c in shell.
On linux, you typically can do:
$ ulimit -c unlimited
The resulting core file will be written in the current working directory of the process when the signal is received.

How use Instruments and display the console in Command Lines applications [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How can I see the output of an OS X program being run via the Time Profiler in Instruments?
(2 answers)
Closed 3 months ago.
I'm using Xcode on OSX to develop command line C applications. I would also like to use Instruments to profile and find memory leaks.
However, I couldn't find a way to display the console when launching the application from within Instruments. I'm also unable to attach to a running command line process (it exits with an error):
Here's an example code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <setjmp.h>
static sigjmp_buf jmpbuf;
void handler(int sig) {
char c[BUFSIZ];
printf ("Got signal %d\n", sig);
printf ("Deseja sair? (s/n) ");
fgets(c, sizeof(c), stdin);
if(c[0] == 's') {
exit(0);
} else {
siglongjmp(jmpbuf, 1);
}
}
int main(void) {
char buf[BUFSIZ];
signal(SIGINT, handler);
sigsetjmp(jmpbuf, 1);
while(1) {
printf(">>>");
fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), stdin);
printf ("Introduziu: %s\n", buf);
}
return(0);
}
Here's the error I got after launching Instruments, and trying to attach to the running process in xcode:
[Switching to process 1475]
[Switching to process 1475]
Error while running hook_stop:
sharedlibrary apply-load-rules all
Error while running hook_stop:
Invalid type combination in ordering comparison.
Error while running hook_stop:
Invalid type combination in ordering comparison.
Error while running hook_stop:
Error while running hook_stop:
Error while running hook_stop:
Error while running hook_stop:
Error while running hook_stop:
Error while running hook_stop:
Error while running hook_stop:
Unable to disassemble __CFInitialize.
Any thoughts?
It's easy. See the screenshot.
It's a little late to contribute to this old thread, however I have found the best way of profiling a command line utility is to use iprofiler (manpage). This allows data to be collected from the command line simply by adding this to the start of the command line:
iprofiler -leaks -d $HOME/tmp
(I have a private temporary directory at $HOME/tmp, so you might need to use /tmp or leave the -d command line option off altogether).
My test scripts automatically add that to the command line if $FINDLEAKS is defined (and will prepend valgrind if running under Linux).
This then generates a .dtps file (actually a directory) which can be loaded and anaylysed using Instruments.
If you are compiling using clang then simply add both -O3 and -g (clang doesn't support the -pg command line option).
You can change the output in the Options dropdown when choosing your target. The output will appear in the system Console (Applications/Utilities/Console).

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