824760 - generate core dumps when we have a crash on android

Status: NEW

(Testing :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

:blassey knows tricks with gdb to generate a core dump that we can use to help debug these random crashes.

Comment 1

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

There appears to be some black magic associated with this on android [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/android-platform/nifVOvknFsU]. Perhaps we can work around it given that we're building our own ROMs for the pandas. CC'ing jchen and julian seward to see if they have any thoughts.

Comment 2

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

Adding ted as well. Ted, any thoughts on modifying the panda board builds to generate core dumps.

Comment 3

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

I don't know anything about core dumps on Android, sorry (and very little about them elsewhere).

Comment 4

[(inactive) Jim Chen [:jchen] [:darchons]]

I got regular Android apps to generate core dumps, which seems to require several stars to align,

The target directory of /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern should have proper permissions

/proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable needs to be set to 1 or 2

The process core rlimit needs to be set (I did this using a utility wrapping around the prlimit system call; prlimit requires ICS or above)

All of these require root. Then I was able to generate the core dumps using kill.

Interestingly this works for Android apps including Firefox Release and Nightly, but doesn't work for my own build, and I'm not sure why. It may be related to different Crash Reporter configurations.

Comment 5

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Is this a sheriffing-P1 simply because of the number of crashes in automation that haven't been fixed?

Comment 6

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

(In reply to Ted Mielczarek [:ted.mielczarek] from comment #5)
> Is this a sheriffing-P1 simply because of the number of crashes in
> automation that haven't been fixed?

Yeah

Comment 7

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Same for bug 803158 (though how it differs from this I don't know, since I know very little about debugging on Android).

Comment 8

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

(In reply to Jim Chen [:jchen :nchen] from comment #4)
> Interestingly this works for Android apps including Firefox Release and
> Nightly, but doesn't work for my own build, and I'm not sure why. It may be
> related to different Crash Reporter configurations.

The reason for this can be found in the dalvik source: it explicitely disables core dumps with rlimit for debuggable builds, which local builds are, and tbpl builds aren't.