Table of Contents
Debugging—The Nine Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software
and Hardware Problems...................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: Introduction.....................................................................................................................4
Overview..................................................................................................................................4
How Can That Work?...............................................................................................................4
Isn't It Obvious?.......................................................................................................................4
Anyone Can Use It...................................................................................................................5
It'll Debug Anything..................................................................................................................5
But It Won't Prevent, Certify, or Triage Anything.....................................................................6
More Than Just Troubleshooting.............................................................................................6
A Word About War Stories.......................................................................................................7
Stay Tuned...............................................................................................................................7
Chapter 2: The Rules−Suitable for Framing....................................................................................9
Chapter 3: Understand the System................................................................................................10
Overview................................................................................................................................10
Read the Manual....................................................................................................................11
Read Everything, Cover to Cover..........................................................................................12
Know What's Reasonable......................................................................................................13
Know the Road Map..............................................................................................................14
Know Your Tools....................................................................................................................14
Look It Up...............................................................................................................................15
Remember.............................................................................................................................16
Understand the System....................................................................................................16
Chapter 4: Make it Fail.....................................................................................................................17
Overview................................................................................................................................17
Do It Again.............................................................................................................................19
Start at the Beginning............................................................................................................19
Stimulate the Failure..............................................................................................................19
Don't Simulate the Failure......................................................................................................20
What If It's Intermittent?.........................................................................................................21
What If I've Tried Everything and It's Still Intermittent?..........................................................22
A Hard Look at Bad Luck.................................................................................................22
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics........................................................................................23
Did You Fix It, or Did You Get Lucky?.............................................................................23
"But That Can't Happen"........................................................................................................24
Never Throw Away a Debugging Tool...................................................................................25
Remember.............................................................................................................................26
Make It Fail.......................................................................................................................26
Chapter 5: Quit Thinking and Look................................................................................................27
Overview................................................................................................................................27
See the Failure.......................................................................................................................29
See the Details.......................................................................................................................31
Now You See It, Now You Don't............................................................................................33
Instrument the System...........................................................................................................33
Design Instrumentation In................................................................................................33
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