This document describes the changes made to the Observer application.
Since Logger was introduced in OTP-21.0, menu choice
Log > Toggle Log View in observer would cause
a crash unless an
Own Id: OTP-15553 Aux Id: ERL-848
Since persistent_term was introduced, observer would sometimes crash when expanding a term from a process state. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-15493 Aux Id: ERL-810
Add
Own Id: OTP-15586 Aux Id: PR-2105
Literals such as
Own Id: OTP-15365 Aux Id: ERL-722
Own Id: OTP-15377
Since OTP-20.2,
A bug when parsing heap data in a crashdump caused
Own Id: OTP-15391
Improved documentation.
Own Id: OTP-15190
Added possibility to garbage collect selected processes and fixed a crash when the saved config file contained bad data.
Own Id: OTP-14993 Aux Id: PR-1666
Use uri_string module instead of http_uri.
Own Id: OTP-14902
etop.hrl used a relative path to include observer_backend.hrl, this is now changed to use include_lib instead. runtime_tools/include is added to the tertiary bootstrap.
Own Id: OTP-14842 Aux Id: ERL-534
If a crashdump was truncated in the attributes section for a module, crashdump_viewer would crash when a module view was opened from the GUI. This bug was introduced in OTP-20.2 and is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14846 Aux Id: ERL-537
Optimized ets and mnesia table view tab in observer gui, listing 10000 tables was previously very slow.
Own Id: OTP-14856 Aux Id: ERIERL-117
When a process has many links and/or monitors, it could earlier take very long time to display the process information window. This is now improved by only showing a few links and monitors, and then an link named "more..." to expand the rest.
Own Id: OTP-14725
More crash dump info such as: process binary virtual heap stats, full info for process causing out-of-mem during GC, more port related info, and dirty scheduler info.
Own Id: OTP-14820
A bug introduced in OTP-20 would make Crashdump Viewer crash when trying to expand an empty binary. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14642
If a match spec in the config file contained more than one clause, observer would earlier crash when trying to display it in the GUI. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14643 Aux Id: ERL-489
Writing of crash dumps is significantly faster.
Maps are now included in crash dumps.
Constants terms would only be shown in one process, while other processes referencing the same constant term would show a marker for incomplete heap.
Own Id: OTP-14685 Aux Id: OTP-14611, OTP-14603, OTP-14595
Binaries and some other data in crash dumps are now encoded in base64 (instead of in hex), which will reduce the size of crash dumps.
A few bugs in the handling of sub binaries in
Own Id: OTP-14686
In order to allow future improvements, Crashdump Viewer now checks the version tag of the crashdump to see that it is a known format. If the crashdump version is newer than Crashdump Viewer is prepared to read, then an information dialog is displayed before Crashdump Viewer terminates.
If an incomplete process heap is discovered in a crashdump, Crashdump Viewer will now display a warning for this, similar to the warning displayed when a crashdump is truncated. Incomplete heaps can occur if for instance the literals are not included, which is the case for all dumps prior to OTP-20.2.
Own Id: OTP-14755
The following improvements are done to Crashdump Viewer:
Own Id: OTP-14386
General Unicode improvements.
Own Id: OTP-14462
Tools are updated to show Unicode atoms correctly.
Own Id: OTP-14464
Add system statistics and limits to frontpage in observer.
Own Id: OTP-14536
Own Id: OTP-14393
Show dirty-scheduler threads in performance monitor graph and add a column with maximum allocated memory in the Memory Allocators table.
Own Id: OTP-14137
Keep table and port selection after refresh of tables. Store settings before shutdown and restore when starting application.
Own Id: OTP-14270
Miscellaneous updates due to atoms containing arbitrary Unicode characters.
Own Id: OTP-14285
When observing a node older than OTP-19.0, a pop-up will be displayed when trying to access port information. Earlier, observer would crash in this situation.
Own Id: OTP-14345 Aux Id: ERL-399
etop erroneously reported the average scheduler utilization since the tool was first started instead of the scheduler utilization since last update. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14090 Aux Id: seq13232
crashdump_viewer crashed when the 'Slogan' had more than one line. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14093 Aux Id: ERL-318
When clicking an HTML-link to a port before the port tab has been opened for the first time, observer would crash since port info is not initiated. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14151 Aux Id: PR-1296
The dialyzer and observer applications will now use a portable way to find the home directory. That means that there is no longer any need to manually set the HOME environment variable on Windows.
Own Id: OTP-14249 Aux Id: ERL-161
The shell script (priv/bin/cdv) and bat file (priv/bin/cdv.bat) which can be used for starting crashdump_viewer both started a distributed erlang node. This would cause any attempt at starting a second instance of the crashdump_viewer to fail. To solve this problem, cdv and cdv.bat now use non-distributed nodes when starting the crashdump_viewer.
Own Id: OTP-14010
A bug caused the number of buckets to be shown in the 'Objects' column, and the number of objects to be shown in the 'Memory' column for ets table in crashdump_viewer. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14064
Add option
The default value for
Own Id: OTP-13829 Aux Id: seq13171
The port information page is updated to show more information per port.
Own Id: OTP-13948 Aux Id: ERL-272
Fixed error handling in observer when mnesia tables was requested and not available.
Own Id: OTP-13845 Aux Id: ERL-237
Fixed a crash happening when observing another node, who have a different number of schedulers than the current one.
Own Id: OTP-13702 Aux Id: ERL-171
Update observer GUI to support tracing on ports, and to set matchspecs for send/receive. This required some minor bugfixes in runtime_tools/dbg.
Own Id: OTP-13481
Update dbg and ttb to work with a tracer module as tracer and tracing on ports.
Own Id: OTP-13500
Added possibility to change update frequency and length of the graph windows.
Own Id: OTP-13555
Improved background coloring to work with dark themes and other visual improvements.
Own Id: OTP-13556
Crashdump viewer now allows port info "Port controls forker process..."
Own Id: OTP-13647
Documentation corrections.
Own Id: OTP-12994
Show ets owner pid in crashdump viewers popup window, thanks Leo Liu.
Own Id: OTP-13030
Several initialisms (eg, ERTS, ETS, SMP) are used as headings. They were being capitalized incorrectly.
Own Id: OTP-13044
Fixed a crash in crashdump viewer when dump contained a truncated binary.
Own Id: OTP-13163
Show run queue status in crashdump viewer.
Own Id: OTP-12401
Don't refresh observer table view if there was no change
Own Id: OTP-12819
Added display of new crashdump information available in crashdumps from Erlang/OTP 18.
Own Id: OTP-12363
Added the possibility to view sasl log entries for processes.
Own Id: OTP-12504
Add memory allocator usage and utilization graphs.
Own Id: OTP-12631
Fix crash when opening a process information window.
Own Id: OTP-12634
A note saying only R15B nodes can be observed is removed from the user guide.
Own Id: OTP-12078
Fixed statusbar on Windows
Own Id: OTP-12162
crashdump_viewer would crash if the owner of a timer was specified as the process' registered name. This has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-11919
Fix crash and minor updates.
Own Id: OTP-11949
etop trace handler now works in smp environment (Thanks to Péter Gömöri)
Own Id: OTP-11633
Application upgrade (appup) files are corrected for the following applications:
A new test utility for testing appup files is added to test_server. This is now used by most applications in OTP.
(Thanks to Tobias Schlager)
Own Id: OTP-11744
Removed gs based applications and gs based backends. The
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
Own Id: OTP-10915
The
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
Own Id: OTP-11179
The documentation for
Own Id: OTP-11335 Aux Id: seq12385
Fixed typo in observer documentation. Thanks to Dave Parfitt.
Own Id: OTP-11475
The encoding of the
Own Id: OTP-11310
Some bugs related to calculation of CPU/scheduler utilization in observer are corrected.
Current function for a process is accepted to be 'undefined' when running hipe.
Own Id: OTP-10894
Own Id: OTP-10604 Aux Id: kunagi-336 [247]
Use "open" as default browser for crashdump viewer on Mac OS X. Thanks to Magnus Henoch.
Own Id: OTP-10929
Fix observer table viewer crash on formatting improper lists. Thanks to Andrey Tsirulev
Own Id: OTP-10931
Postscript files no longer needed for the generation of PDF files have been removed.
Own Id: OTP-11016
Add processes state view in observer. Thanks to Eric Pailleau.
Own Id: OTP-11136
Where necessary a comment stating encoding has been added to Erlang files. The comment is meant to be removed in Erlang/OTP R17B when UTF-8 becomes the default encoding.
Own Id: OTP-10630
The module name in the link to the detail page for each loaded module was earlier not URL encoded. If the module name contained e.g. a # this could cause the crashdump viewer to crash when opening the link. This has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-10090 Aux Id: seq12068
Escape control characters in Table Viewer
Similar behaviour to old tv. Objects in tables supposed to be printed in a single line and it looks ugly when a [...,10,...] integer list creates a new-line. Fix Table Viewer search crash on new|changed|deleted rows.
Fix Table Viewer crash after a 'Found' -> 'Not found' search sequence
Start position was lost after a 'Found' -> 'Not found' search sequence leading an undefined position in the next search. Thanks to Peti Gömori
Own Id: OTP-10218
observer: fix app file (Noticed-by: Motiejus Jakstys)
Add missing observer modules to observer.app.src. Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz.
Own Id: OTP-10221
Make Table Viewer search a bit faster
Edit table row in a multiline text dialog. Thanks to Peti Gomori.
Own Id: OTP-10225
Allow tracing on bifs.
Ask epmd for local nodes, and remember users last input in connect.
Fix crashes when a table or process information could not be retrieved.
Own Id: OTP-10075
The following bugs in
Own Id: OTP-9431
The file trace port to which the IP trace client relays all traces from diskless nodes was not flushed and closed properly on ttb:stop. This has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-9665
A new GUI for Observer. Integrating pman, etop, appmon and tv into observer with tracing facilities.
Own Id: OTP-4779
The following new features are added to
Own Id: OTP-9403
The following non backwards compatible changes are done
in
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
Own Id: OTP-9430
Do not install *.bat files on non-win32 machines (Thanks to Hans Ulrich Niedermann)
Own Id: OTP-9515
The time needed for loading a crashump into the crashdump viewer would earlier grow exponentially with the size of the crashdump file. Reading a file of 20M would take a couple of minutes, and for a dump of 250M it would take between 1 and 2 hours. This has been solved.
Earlier, all processes, timers, funs or ets-tables would be loaded into the memory of the crashdump viewer node before sending it on to the web server. This has been changed and the pages are now sent to the web server in chunks.
A security function in newer web browsers prevents a full file path to be sent from an HTML file input field, i.e. the field needed to implement the "Browse" button when loading a file into the crashdump viewer. To overcome this, the file input field is no longer used. Instead a normal text input field is used, and the user needs to manually insert the complete file path. For convenience, a shell script and a batch file are added to the observer application. These can be used to start the crashdump_viewer and a browser and load a file - with the file name given from the command line. The shell script and batch file are called cdv and cdv.bat respectively, and can be found in the priv dir of the observer application.
Own Id: OTP-9051 Aux Id: seq11789
The multitrace.erl installation example file is now installed in the examples directory. (Thanks to Peter Lemenkov.)
Own Id: OTP-8857
The test suite has been updated for R14A.
Own Id: OTP-8708
Misc updates
Own Id: OTP-8456
Major improvements of the Erlang distribution for Erlang runtime systems with SMP support. Previously distribution port locks were heavily contended, and all encoding and decoding for a specific distribution channel had to be done in sequence. Lock contention due to the distribution is now negligible and both encoding and decoding of Erlang messages can be done in parallel.
The old atom cache protocol used by the Erlang distribution has been dropped since it effectively prevented all parallel encoding and decoding of messages passed over the same distribution channel.
A new atom cache protocol has been introduced which isolates atom cache accesses and makes parallel encoding and decoding of messages passed over the same distribution channel possible. The new atom cache protocol also use an atom cache size 8 times larger than before. The new atom cache protocol is documented in the ERTS users guide.
Erlang messages received via the distribution are now decoded by the receiving Erlang processes without holding any distribution channel specific locks. Erlang messages and signals sent over the distribution are as before encoded by the sending Erlang process, but now without holding any distribution channel specific locks during the encoding. That is, both encoding and decoding can be and are done in parallel regardless of distribution channel used.
The part that cannot be parallelized is the atom cache updates. Atom cache updates are therefore now scheduled on the distribution port. Since it is only one entity per distribution channel doing this work there is no lock contention due to the atom cache updates.
The new runtime system does not understand the old atom cache protocol. New and old runtime systems can however still communicate, but no atom cache will be used.
Own Id: OTP-7774
Own Id: OTP-7519
The copyright notices have been updated.
Own Id: OTP-7851
Minor Makefile changes.
Own Id: OTP-6689
Obsolete guard tests (such as list()) have been replaced with the modern guard tests (such as is_list()).
Own Id: OTP-6725
This application has been updated to eliminate warnings by Dialyzer.
Own Id: OTP-6551
Several minor bugs and race conditions eliminated in the runtime_tools and observer applications.
Own Id: OTP-6265
Crash dump with large integers could crash the
Own Id: OTP-6301
Fixed a bug in
Own Id: OTP-6075
The Observer application has been recompiled because of a compiler bug.
Own Id: OTP-5700
Own Id: OTP-5408