A distributed debugger for Amoeba

Abstract

We describe a debugger that is being developed for distributed programs in Amoeba. A major goal in our work is to make the debugger independent of the Amoeba kernel. Our design integrates many facilities found in other debuggers, such as execution replay, breakpointing, and an event-based view of the execution of the target program. This paper discusses the influence of Amoeba's architecture on the attainability of our goals and the desired functionality of the debugger. We also consider such problems as how to deal with timeouts and interactions between the target program and its environment.