pstatck

Ruby backtrace additions by Joe Damato (ice799)

• http://timetobleed.com
• http://github.com/ice799
• ice799@gmail.com

How to build pstack

cd /path/to/pstack-source autconf ./configure make sudo make install

How to use ruby backtrace

After you've built and installed pstrack simply:

pstack-gdb --ruby <pid-of-ruby-process>

Your ruby process will then output a stack trace. For example:

-- 11.04.2009 16:10:25 from /home/joe/test2.rb:14:in write' from /home/joe/test2.rb:14:in puts' from /home/joe/test2.rb:14:in ok' from /home/joe/test2.rb:16:in ok' from /home/joe/test2.rb:27 from /home/joe/test2.rb:27:in `times' from /home/joe/test2.rb:27

OPTIONAL but STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Included with the source is a patch, rb_backtrace.patch, which applies to ruby-1.8.7_p72 to allow backtraces to be output to a file instead of stdout. This is useful if your application does lots of logging, or it needs stdout for something else.

To use the patch simply: cd ruby-187-p72-src/ patch -p1 < /path/to/pstack/rb_backtrace.patch

And then configure, make, and make install ruby like normal.

You can then set the RUBY_BACKTRACE_FILE environment variable to a file, and backtraces wil be written to that file. For example:

RUBY_BACKTRACE_FILE=/tmp/my-backtrace ruby my-application.rb

The backtrace will be written to /tmp/my-backtrace.PID