[Ohrrpgce] Crash reporting

Fri Sep 7 21:28:52 PDT 2018

Looks like I managed to break Windows nightly builds somehow. It's not even
sending email with the build log anymore!

On Fri, 7 Sep 2018 at 01:03, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:

> I see that the last nightly build failed.
>
> Firstly, there's this error:
>   'nightly\ohrrpgce' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
>    operable program or batch file.
> I saw this sort of crazy thing a lot while testing. "svn update" must have
> modified the copy of distrib-nightly-win.bat that was being executed!
> cmd.exe kept the same position in the file, but its contents changed, so it
> was suddenly in the middle of a line.
> I had thought that a separate copy of the source code was used to provide
> the nightly build scripts and that you had to manually update them if they
> changed, but I guess you changed that at some point. (I thought that
> comment at the top was obsolete!)
> I guess this isn't worth fixing, but just keep it mind it might cause more
> (temporary) build failures in future.
>
> All other errors are also caused by the same thing. The first few lines of
> the old .bat file and the rest of the new .bat were executed, so the
> necessary environmental variables didn't get set. The next nightly build
> should hopefully work correctly.
>
>
>
> On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 13:14, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>
>> Awesome! I'll take a look and see if I need to change anything on the
>> build VMs or on the dreamhost account when I get a chance. This has been a
>> very busy week, but I have been reading all your commit messages with a
>> smile on my face :D
>>
>> ---
>> James
>>
>> On Wednesday, September 5, 2018, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> OK, I'm finally done with changes to the distrib scripts. I don't know
>>> how I managed to spend so many commits on cleaning them up...
>>> James, set the value of $SCPSYMBOLS, the location to upload the symbols
>>> archives to, to your liking. It's set in three different files.
>>> Although I renamed some scripts, that shouldn't affect anything.
>>>
>>> Hmm, I should make the windows nightly build script skip the build if
>>> there have been no svn commits, like the mac nightlies already do.
>>> (I'm not sure but I don't think we can easily reuse a .pdb file for two
>>> builds made from identical source code, because the .exe hash won't
>>> necessarily match)
>>> Skipping unnecessarily rebuilds would allow rebuilding the builds more
>>> than once per 24 hours (manually, or by cron).
>>> (I tried to let you still manually force additional early builds as long
>>> as there's been an svn commit, by putting the commit number in the archive
>>> name. But I just realised that won't work if you do a  manual build and
>>> then the scheduled build happens after, without any commits between. )
>>>
>>> On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 at 15:48, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> OK, great!
>>>> I think it would definitely be a good idea to get the php script to
>>>> forward reports to ohrrpgce-crash at hamsterrepublic.com so they don't
>>>> get forgotten (assuming there isn't a flood of them). Unless they are too
>>>> large, I guess - someone could try to include a large .rpg file in the
>>>> report. Is your email hosted by dreamhost? Then it seems that I can just
>>>> send email from another hamsterrepublic.com address to ohrrpgce-crash
>>>> using php's mail() function, according to the dreamhost docs.
>>>> And, I'll put the script in the web/ directory in svn.
>>>>
>>>> What about uploading the exe/pdb archives, where should they be put? I
>>>> guess I'll name them something like
>>>> ohrrpgce-symbols-win-$RELEASE-$BACKENDS-$DATE-$SVNREV.7z (I'll put 7z.exe
>>>> in support/) and they can all go in one directory, and old files can be
>>>> deleted manually when we do a release, or automated later.
>>>> Incidentally, I notice that only mac nghtly builds skip building if
>>>> there are no changes to svn, linux and win builds build regardless.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 at 03:07, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Okay, you can now configure crashrpt to submit its reports to
>>>>> https://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/crashrpt/
>>>>>
>>>>> They get saved in /home/james_paige/crash_reports/ which is not web
>>>>> accessible.
>>>>>
>>>>> TMC, if you send me an ssh public key, I can give you ssh/sftp access
>>>>> to that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Feel free to make whatever changes you like to the nightly build
>>>>> scripts, and let me know what I need to change, either on the VMs or on the
>>>>> dreamhost account
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 8:34 AM, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Anything that gives better crash reports sounds great to me.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Increasing the download size a bit is not a big problem. I think our
>>>>>> downloads are already comparatively tiny.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I also don't expect any problem with storing a few gigabytes of exes
>>>>>> and crash related data. My dreamhost account might be stingy about
>>>>>> processor resources, but it is very generous about storage space.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'll see what I can do about setting up that php script. We can use
>>>>>> it over either http or https since I have LetsEncrypt certs for all my
>>>>>> domains
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is going to be a busy week, so if I don't get to it today it
>>>>>> will have to be next weekend. (I am making myself a reminder)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sunday, September 2, 2018, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've heard of quite a few reports of various kinds of crashes which
>>>>>>> I don't have enough information to do anything about, so am forced to
>>>>>>> ignore. (Mostly they've been reported on the SS Discord server which even
>>>>>>> has a dedicated channel for reporting bugs!).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My previous attempt to generate stack traces on Windows required
>>>>>>> somewhat large extra dlls to parse the DWARF debug info in game/custom.exe,
>>>>>>> and they can't provide line numbers, which would require huge
>>>>>>> totally-unstripped builds. Line numbers would help hugely.
>>>>>>> So the new plan is to instead generate minidumps which get sent back
>>>>>>> for analysis. Win XP and later have a function to generate minidumps (and
>>>>>>> the dll can be downloaded for older Windows versions if needed) The
>>>>>>> minidump includes the stack of each thread, so you can use it to generate
>>>>>>> traces with line numbers and inspect variables. Optionally you can include
>>>>>>> more parts of the process memory like global variables, but that makes it
>>>>>>> large.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've been trying out an open-source reporter, which sends reports
>>>>>>> over the internet with minimal user will needed:
>>>>>>> http://crashrpt.sourceforge.net/
>>>>>>> There are a couple other such reporters, like BreakPad (originally
>>>>>>> from Mozilla, and used by Firefox and Chrome) but they seem pretty
>>>>>>> heavy-weight and more difficult to use.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> CrashRpt requires a separate .dll (I doubt I would be able to
>>>>>>> statically link) plus CrashSender.exe which does the actual work, and an
>>>>>>> ini file.
>>>>>>> Zipped, these are 300KB in total (I compiled a custom build to strip
>>>>>>> out the extravagant ability to record ogg theora videos and jpgs!). So
>>>>>>> that's fine for including with Custom in support/. But we wouldn't want
>>>>>>> these extra files when distributing games. However, if you have a full
>>>>>>> distribution of the OHRRPGCE, then any copy of game.exe can reuse the
>>>>>>> CrashRpt files from support/. If CrashRpt isn't available, game.exe can
>>>>>>> still easily save a minidump itself and ask the user to email it manually.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> == How this will work ==
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> CrashRpt does not generate stack traces. It only collects data and
>>>>>>> sends it off. You can tell it which files to attach, and it includes some
>>>>>>> metadata and a minidump and can include a screenshot.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> fbc -gen gas generates STABS debug symbols, gcc generates DWARF
>>>>>>> symbols, and Visual C++ generates PDB symbols, which live in a separate
>>>>>>> .pdb file. PDB is undocumented, but recently LLVM folks have been creating
>>>>>>> documentation by examining code Microsoft open-sourced. So GCC and GDB
>>>>>>> don't support PDB or minidumps.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We can use the cv2pdb tool to convert DWARF to .pdb files, which we
>>>>>>> keep. The executables themselves get stripped, and also need to be kept; a
>>>>>>> .pdb alone is useless. (Currently we partially strip exes, leaving in
>>>>>>> function symbols so gcc can create a backtrace. I don't think that's worth
>>>>>>> keeping anymore, except in the debug build. By fully stripping, we can
>>>>>>> reduce each exe by another 300KB.) cv2pdb doesn't convert FB strings
>>>>>>> correctly, but those are on the heap so not in the minidump anyway.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> To examine the minidumps, you can use Visual Studio (the free
>>>>>>> versions will do) or windbg (CLI), or use a commandline tool or server-side
>>>>>>> to generate a stracktrace and other info from it. CrashRpt has such a tool,
>>>>>>> and scripts for handling large numbers of crash reports and sorting them.
>>>>>>> BreakPad also has tools for it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> == What we need to do ==
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Firstly the .pdb files should get uploaded somewhere. We will want
>>>>>>> to keep the .pdb files and .exes for every nightly build - not just the
>>>>>>> weekly archived nightlies! .pdb files alone are unfortunately useless.
>>>>>>> I'm going to get rid of most of most of our windows nightly builds,
>>>>>>> they're redundant now that you can switch graphics backend. So leaving just
>>>>>>> music_sdl, music_native, music_native2 and music_sdl-debug. (In fact,
>>>>>>> music_native and music_native2 appear broken and I couldn't find anyone who
>>>>>>> uses them or even remembers using them.)
>>>>>>> We should keep the files for at least every default (music_sdl)
>>>>>>> build since at least the last stable release, probably longer since not
>>>>>>> everyone upgrades promptly. Using xz, the game+custom exe+pdb files
>>>>>>> compress to 2.4MB. So 4 builds, 3 months of backups is ~1000MB. **
>>>>>>> An idea to save space: upload just the music_sdl files since the
>>>>>>> last stable release, (~250MB) and keep all the other files on the build
>>>>>>> machine in the unlikely event they're needed.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> (** however I just remembered that exes from the nightly build
>>>>>>> machine are significantly larger than ones built on my machine)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Secondly we need to collect reports - CrashRpt can send via HTTP,
>>>>>>> HTTPS, SMTP and by opening an email client. I assume dreamhost will block
>>>>>>> emails from random IPs, so we will want HTTP.
>>>>>>> There is an example php script to accept reports and save them.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://crashrpt.sourceforge.net/docs/html/sending_error_reports.html#httpsend
>>>>>>> I guess it would be easiest if we modify this script to email us the
>>>>>>> zip file. And keep a copy on the server in case something goes wrong? Can
>>>>>>> we put us up at hamsterrepublic.com?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> ohrrpgce at lists.motherhamster.org
>>>>> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org
>>>>>
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>
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