In my code I have a bug: I lock std::mutex twice.
I always run a debug version of my app.
There are 2 run cases:
I run it under the debugger. In this case I get exception with the following stack trace. It is ok.
I just run it without the debugger. I get Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Debug Error window.
Then I connect the debugger to the process and click Retry.
I get the following stack trace which is really showing nothing:
Exactly the same bug. Two different stack traces. Why?
Addition #1: I have all the symbols specified correctly (including Microsoft Windows's one).
In the first stack you are in the application at the place the exception was raised. I guess you had set some form of 'break on exception' in debugger.
In the second stack you are in the application at the place the exception was caught. This occurs after the raise, in a catch block. Looks like you are in the catch block of the _Call_func frame.
So the two cases look different because they are different. Although is the same incident, you are looking at it in different moments.
If I'd venture a guess you have a callback of some sort in which you do not have a try/catch block and let exception propagate to CRT, which dutifully aborts the process because of unhandled exception.
Mandatory reading: A Crash Course on the Depths of Win32™ Structured Exception Handling to understand what occurred between the the two momements and how the first stack would transition into the second, if let unwind and proceed.
Exception Dispatching is causing this behavior:
When an exception occurs in user-mode code, the system uses the following search order to find an exception handler:
If the process is being debugged, the system notifies the debugger. For more information, see Debugger Exception Handling.
If the process is not being debugged, or if the associated debugger does not handle the exception, the system attempts to locate a frame-based exception handler by searching the stack frames of the thread in which the exception occurred. The system searches the current stack frame first, then searches through preceding stack frames in reverse order.
If no frame-based handler can be found, or no frame-based handler handles the exception, but the process is being debugged, the system notifies the debugger a second time.
If the process is not being debugged, or if the associated debugger does not handle the exception, the system provides default handling based on the exception type. For most exceptions, the default action is to call the ExitProcess function.
In the first example, the debugger stops at 1), in the second example, the system stops at 4) and would usually kill the process. But since you have Visual Studio installed, it thinks you could be a developer and asks you to debug.
Between 1) where the exception is thrown and 4) where the process is about to die, a lot of things happened and the call stack is different.
Related
I have an exception handler set up using SetUnhandledExceptionFilter, which works fine. However, if I throw an exception from within OpenMP code, I get the standard "the application crashed" window and the handler is not called -- however, I can attach a debugger just fine and see that the call stack is ending with _CxxThrowException and continues into KernelBase.dll!RaiseException. I know that an OpenMP program which throws exceptions inside the parallel regions is wrong, but I'd still like to get a crash dump. How can I get my exception handler get called in this case?
Should be possible, especially as the debugger manges to get an "Unhandled exception" window, when attached to the application after the crash (i.e. I can get a nice stack trace and stuff.) This is on Windows 7 with VC++ 2010.
(Eventually, each thread actually calls my exception handler. If it crashes, and I select 'Debug', and then continue on each unhandled exception, the handler eventually gets called and it also manages to write out a meaningful minidump. Wtf?)
Interesting. Going out on a limb, I'll wager that the OpenMP concurrency runtime doesn't honor the SetUnhandledExceptionFilter (which will work for "standard" threads), and isn't integrated into this feature of Structured Exception Handling.
Note this warning from the MSDN page on Exception Handling in the Concurrency Runtime
To prevent abnormal termination of your application, make sure that your code handles exceptions when it calls into the runtime. Also handle exceptions when you call into external code that uses the Concurrency Runtime, for example, a third-party library.
Perhaps you can try wrapping your OpenMP stuff in the style of exception handling outlined above, and then see if you can re-package and throw it (outside of OpenMP context) to get caught by the filter?
Like in Just In Time debugging, does VS 2003 compiled apps catch Win32 (or asynchronous) exceptions in a catch (...) and unwind the stack? before the dump file is written...
No, the debugger invocation is created in code that runs UP the stack from the exception, so the stack has not yet unwind. That is true for both sync (C++)and async (OS) exception.
See the Fig. 13 in the famous MSJ article A Crash Course on the Depths of Win32™ Structured Exception Handling.
The unhandled exception filter is invoked after the first pass of the exception filter list, if no filter admitted that is willing to handle the exception. This first pass is before the unwinding, which occurs on the second pass. If you break into the debugger when given a chance you'll find your exception place down your stack, and that makes perfect sense: it would give little to no value to debug a stack that had already unwound, you would have no idea what went wrong.
This depends on stack unwind semantics choosen when compiling your application
Compiler can be instructed to catch or not to catch SEH exceptions for your code.
Startup code always catches C++ & SEH exceptions and if any exception is caught it terminates the application.
I am maintaining a project which uses inter-process COM with C++. At the top level of the callee functions there are try/catch statements directly before the return back through COM. The catch converts any C++ exceptions into custom error codes that are passed back to the caller through the COM layer.
For the purpose of debugging I want to disable this try/catch, and simply let the exception cause a crash in the callee process (as would normally happen with an uncaught C++ exception). Unfortunately for me the COM boundary seems to swallow these uncaught C++ exceptions and I don't get a crash.
Is there a way to change this behaviour in COM? Ie, I want it to allow the uncaught C++ exception to cause a crash in the callee process.
I want this to happen so that I can attach a debugger and see the context in which the exception is thrown. If I simply leave our try/catch in place, and breakpoint on the catch, then the stack has already unwound, and so this is too late for me.
The original "COM masters" who wrote this application are all either unavailable or can't remember enough details.
This just in, a year and a half after the question was asked -
Raymond Chen has written a post about "How to turn off the exception handler that COM 'helpfully' wraps around your server". Seems like the ultimate answer to the question. If not for the OP, for future readers.
I don't think you can disable this behaviour, however there is a way around it if you are using Visual Studio and don't mind getting flooded in exceptions. If you go to Debug>Exceptions in VS and select "When the exception is thrown>Break into the Debugger" for C++ exceptions, it will drop into the debugger at the point the exception is thrown. Unfortunately you then get to work out which exceptions you can ignore and which ones are of interest to you.
The default setting for this is "Continue" with "If the exception is not handled" being set to "break into the debugger". If it doesn't do that already this would suggest that you'll have to find out exactly where the exceptions are being caught.
If I understand correctly, your problem is essentially the inability to get a stack trace from a C++ exception. I've never tried it myself, but it should actually be possible to get the stack trace even from within the catch block.
See: Getting an exception call stack from the catch block
The article describes the process of getting the stack trace using a debugger, but if you don't want one to be attached you can create a dump in the catch clause (one way, another), and then go through the process on your leisure.
Have a look at Vectored Exception Handlers -- depending on your exact use case, VEH could be used to intercept SEH exception handling and force crashes/dumps/whatever.
You can set up a level 2 break in debugger with sxe/sxd -c2 eh that will catch only unhandled C++ exceptions. You can also attach the debugger on the fly to your process at load time using GFlags. Of course you'd have to give up the mickey mouse debugger and use the real deal.
What you need is to enable "break when an exception is thrown" in your debugger. This way you will stop immediately when an exception is thrown and have the entire call stack at your service.
I'm working on a multithreaded application, and I want to debug it using GDB.
Problem is, one of my threads keeps dying with the message:
pure virtual method called
terminate called without an active exception
Abort
I know the cause of that message, but I have no idea where in my thread it occurs. A backtrace would really be helpful.
When I run my app in GDB, it pauses every time a thread is suspended or resumed. I want my app to continue running normally until one of the threads dies with that exception, at which point everything should halt so that I can get a backtrace.
You can try using a "catchpoint" (catch throw) to stop the debugger at the point where the exception is generated.
The following excerpt From the gdb manual describes the catchpoint feature.
5.1.3 Setting catchpoints
You can use catchpoints to cause the debugger to stop for certain kinds of program events, such as C++ exceptions or the loading of a shared library. Use the catch command to set a catchpoint.
catch event
Stop when event occurs. event can be any of the following:
throw
The throwing of a C++ exception.
catch
The catching of a C++ exception.
exec
A call to exec. This is currently only available for HP-UX.
fork
A call to fork. This is currently only available for HP-UX.
vfork
A call to vfork. This is currently only available for HP-UX.
load or load libname
The dynamic loading of any shared library, or the loading of the library libname. This is currently only available for HP-UX.
unload or unload libname
The unloading of any dynamically loaded shared library, or the unloading of the library libname. This is currently only available for HP-UX.
tcatch event
Set a catchpoint that is enabled only for one stop. The catchpoint is automatically deleted after the first time the event is caught.
Use the info break command to list the current catchpoints.
There are currently some limitations to C++ exception handling (catch throw and catch catch) in GDB:
If you call a function interactively, GDB normally returns control to you when the function has finished executing. If the call raises an exception, however, the call may bypass the mechanism that returns control to you and cause your program either to abort or to simply continue running until it hits a breakpoint, catches a signal that GDB is listening for, or exits. This is the case even if you set a catchpoint for the exception; catchpoints on exceptions are disabled within interactive calls.
You cannot raise an exception interactively.
You cannot install an exception handler interactively.
Sometimes catch is not the best way to debug exception handling: if you need to know exactly where an exception is raised, it is better to stop before the exception handler is called, since that way you can see the stack before any unwinding takes place. If you set a breakpoint in an exception handler instead, it may not be easy to find out where the exception was raised.
To stop just before an exception handler is called, you need some knowledge of the implementation. In the case of GNU C++, exceptions are raised by calling a library function named __raise_exception which has the following ANSI C interface:
/* addr is where the exception identifier is stored.
id is the exception identifier. */
void __raise_exception (void **addr, void *id);
To make the debugger catch all exceptions before any stack unwinding takes place, set a breakpoint on __raise_exception (see section Breakpoints; watchpoints; and exceptions).
With a conditional breakpoint (see section Break conditions) that depends on the value of id, you can stop your program when a specific exception is raised. You can use multiple conditional breakpoints to stop your program when any of a number of exceptions are raised.
FWIW, apparently, in gcc 4.1, the appropriate function name has changed and one must set a breakpoint in this function.
__cxa_pure_virtual
Only below one worked for me with gdb 8.3:
break _Unwind_RaiseException
"catch throw" or "break __cxx_throw" didn't work for me.
Set a breakpoint on __pure_virtual
Our application is using mshtml. That dll is causing our application to exit ungracefully due to well known problems in mshtml since we don't install newer browsers on users' machines. We just use what they have already.
The SetUnhandledExceptionFilter() does not handle this, nor does a try/catch block around the calls into mshtml. The exception filter does catch other exceptions.
The exception settings are /EHa.
When I remote debug the crash I see:
unhandled exception - access violation
In mshtml but if I don't attach to the process with a debugger, the application just exits.
What do we need to do to catch the exception?
Edit:
This is an old version of IE6.
Seems to be that MSHTML functions passes necessary data to a separate thread. That separate thread processes your request and the exception takes place. That's why you cannot catch exception via try/catch block. You should check it in the debugger. If that is true the only way to catch exceptions from other threads is to set hooks for TerminateThread and TerminateProcess functions. Check out CApiHook class by Jeffrey Richter for that purpose(or other implementations). But it will make your program to be incompatible with /NXCOMPAT compiler flag.
Your second option is to install all important OS updates.
Almost there. It's not SetUnhandledExceptionFilter() but AddVectoredExceptionHandler you want. With that said, you can get the first shot at this exception.
Of course I'm wondering what you're going to do afterwards. TerminateThread is probably the only option you have, but that may very well deadlock MSHTML. So that needs killing too.