[Ohrrpgce] Crash reporting

Sat Sep 8 03:35:06 PDT 2018

If I have time this weekend, I'll boot up that VM in interactive mode and
investigate :)

On Saturday, September 8, 2018, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Ohrrpgce mailing list
>>>>>> ohrrpgce at lists.motherhamster.org
>>>>>> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-
>>>>>> motherhamster.org
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ohrrpgce mailing list
>>> ohrrpgce at lists.motherhamster.org
>>> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org
>>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.motherhamster.org/pipermail/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org/attachments/20180908/1e4ad081/attachment-0001.html>