Description
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Overview
This VI is used to help trouble shoot crashes/hangs by taking advantage of System Configuration VI’s to log location and system resource usage.
Description
This is a VI that has been written to help LabVIEW users troubleshoot their code when having problems with large applications. It is intended for crash and hang troubleshooting but can also be used to:
- Track processes within a program
- Write to a text file to keep track of location within an application while running
- Write to a text file to track system resources at particular points in time.
First step in trouble shooting any crash is to find out what is causing the crash and simplifying code to make a reproducing case. This VI would be used to help narrow down where crashes/hangs are occurring, if there are CPU spikes and if memory leaks exist within the application. The idea behind the VI is that you should be able to narrow down what the last state is before the crash and/or what the resource status on the target looks like during run time.
NOTE: Crash Logger.vi doesn’t work on MAC OS even though it has an option for it.
Hardware and Software Requirements
LabVIEW 18-20
Included is the LabVIEW 2018 version of the VI and a Project to demonstrate how it is used if needed. If you need a previous year hopefully someone can post it for you!
Steps to Implement or Execute Code
Crash Logger.vi is self-contained, requiring no special driver, as all it uses is File I/O and System Configuration API to write the Current Location of the VI and various host (Windows PC or Real Time Target) information. The text file it creates is “State_Tracker_Log.txt” and should be located where you saved the project for a Windows application. For Real Time OS’s, the file will be in locations “C:” for Pharlap ETS targets, “c:” for VxWorks targets and “home:\lvuser” for Linux targets. You will have to either use NI Max to view the files or use FTP to pull the files off the RT target. If you don’t pull the file off after each run the text will be over written from run to run.
To use the “Crash Logger.VI” you simply need to drop the VI into locations of your code you would like to keep track of within your application. You then attach a string of where you put the VI (i.e. “Application Begin”) and choose what type of log you would like to perform using the enum. Then attach the error wires to your code (because we all error handle) and run your program. The text file is written to specific locations depending on your OS. You can see from the Crash Logger.vi block diagram where it logs to depending on what OS you are running the VI on.
Attached to this example is a project that has a simple state machine that shows how the VI can be used to track State’s and resources.
Note - If you save the .txt file to Windows and open it in Notepad it will be one long string with no Return Carriage's being acknowledged. To get around this simply open with Notepad++ or Wordpad.
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