The Crashdump Viewer is an HTML based tool for browsing Erlang crashdumps. Crashdump Viewer runs under the WebTool application.

The easiest way to start Crashdump Viewer is to use the provided shell script named cdv with the full path to the erlang crashdump as an argument. The script can be found in the priv directory of the observer application. This starts WebTool, Crashdump Viewer and a web browser, and loads the given file. The browser should then display a page named General Information which shows a short summary of the information in the crashdump.

The default browser is Internet Explorer on Windows, open on Mac OS X, or else Firefox. To use another browser, give the browser's start command as the second argument to cdv. If the given browser name is not known to Crashdump Viewer, the browser argument is executed as a command with the start URL as the only argument.

Under Windows the batch file cdv.bat can be used.

It is also possible to start the Crashdump Viewer from within an erlang node by calling crashdump_viewer:start/0. This will automatically start WebTool and display the web address where WebTool can be found. See the documentation for the WebTool application for further information about how to use WebTool.

Point your web browser to the address displayed, and you should now see the start page of WebTool. At the top of the page, you will see a link to "CrashDumpViewer". Click this link to get to the start page for Crashdump Viewer. (Note that if webtool is on localhost, you must configure your web browser to have direct connection to the internet, or you must set no proxy for localhost.)

From the start page of Crashdump Viewer, push the "Load Crashdump" button to load a crashdump into the tool. Then enter the filename of the crashdump in the entry field and push the "Ok" button. This will bring you to the General Information page, i.e. the same page as the cdv script will open in the browser.

Crashdumps generated by OTP R9C and later are loaded directly into the Crashdump Viewer, while dumps from earlier releases first are translated by the Crashdump Translater. The Crashdump Translater creates a new file with the same name as the original crashdump, but with the extension .translated. If there is no write access to the directory of the original file, you will be asked to enter a new path and filename for the translated file.

The lefthand frame contains a menu. Menu folders can be expanded and collapsed by clicking the folder picture. When a menu item is clicked, the item information is shown in the big information frame.

The filename frame above the information frame shows the full name of the currently viewed Erlang crashdump.

To load a new crashdump, click the "Load New Crashdump" button in the menu frame.

The various information shown in the information frame will contain links to process identifiers (PIDs) and port identifiers. Clicking one of these links will take you to the detailed information page for the process or port in question. Use the "Back" button in your browser to get back to the startingpoint. If the process or port resided on a remote node, there will be no information available. Clicking the link will then take you to the information about the remote node.

Further help on how to use the Crashdump Viewer tool can be found in the tool's menu under 'Documentation':

'Crashdump Viewer help' is a short document describing each information page and any additional information that might occur, compared to the raw dump described in 'How to interpret Erlang crashdumps'.

'How to interpret Erlang crashdumps' is a document from the Erlang runtime system describing details in the raw crashdumps. Here you will also find information about each single field in the different information pages. This document can also be found directly in the OTP online documentation, via the Erlang runtime system user's guide.