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Webservice Debugs Linux Binaries While-U-Wait

Posted by michael on from the laziness-and-impatience dept.

null-und-eins writes "A new webservice offers automatic debugging of Linux binaries. It takes a (with "-g" compiled) binary and two invocations where one fails and the other doesn't. The service repeatedly runs the two programs and tries to find the smallest difference between the two that causes the failure. Nice google-like interface with statistics about its own performance."

7 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Let me get this straight... by Space+cowboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    It mentions that the whole thing runs in debian 'woody' sandboxes when the code is run. Presumably you can only 'rootkit' the sandbox ...

    Simon

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  2. Re:Ok igor... by Andreas+Zeller · · Score: 5, Informative

    No problem. Igor runs your program in a sandbox whose contents get restored with each new submission.

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    www.askigor.org - automated debugging service

  3. Re:poor admin... by Andreas+Zeller · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most people coming from /. just have a look at the main site. By redirecting, we reduce traffic by about 50% and Apache load by 75%. If you want to go beyond (and maybe submit some buggy program), you're welcome!

    --

    www.askigor.org - automated debugging service

  4. Re:This is cool but by Andreas+Zeller · · Score: 5, Informative
    We're running AskIgor as a Web service (instead of a standalone program) for two reasons:
    • We get a set of programs for regression testing.
    • We get some ratings about the quality of our work.
    Although we did our best to give AskIgor a decent interface, it's still a research prototype, and there's many possible ways to go. Your submissions help us making these decisions, and guide our future development.
    --

    www.askigor.org - automated debugging service

  5. It's a bit more complex than just "diff" by mbessey · · Score: 3, Informative

    Please read the article.

    The tool executes your program multiple times, and examines the internal state of the program (variable values and memory contents) at various stages in the execution.

    It then automatically isolates the root cause of the failure. This is pretty cool stuff, and ought to save a lot of time tracking down complex bugs.

    -Mark

  6. Re:Google-like... wait a second... by Andreas+Zeller · · Score: 5, Informative

    We're redirecting only if you come from /.

    --

    www.askigor.org - automated debugging service

  7. Re:Question by Andreas+Zeller · · Score: 5, Informative
    The core technology behind Igor is delta debugging, a general method to determine the difference between a working and a failing scenario.

    While not applying AskIgor (being a huge mix of Python, PHP, and SQL) on itself, we have applied delta debugging on various parts of AskIgor to detect failure-inducing code changes, and especially failure-inducing GDB commands.

    We're currently working on Eclipse plugins written in Java, and working on Java - and these will work 100% on themselves.

    --

    www.askigor.org - automated debugging service