gnucash locks when running on a remote workstation

[Robert Graham Merkel]

Rich Shepard writes:
 > On Wed, 15 Nov 2000 linas@linas.org wrote:

 > > To further debug, you need to send us the following info:
 > >
 > > installd gdb (gnu debugger) if not already installed.
 > 
 >   It's there.
 > 
 > > at the command line:  gdb gnucash
 > > you get a prompt, type: r    (for 'run')
 > >
 > > after it crashes, type 'where', and mail in that listing.
 > > ('where' provides a stack trace)
 > 
 >   Doesn't running strace gnucash do the same thing? I ask only because I've
 > heard of strace, but I've not had need -- yet -- to run it.
 > 

strace and gdb serve two different and complementary purposes.  strace
intercepts and logs what are called "system calls" (requests from your
program to the Linux kernel to do something).  gdb attaches itself to
a program and watches the execution of the program itself, line by line.

As a starting point, we're most interested in what gnucash is doing
when the crash occurs - for one thing, if we can find out what gnucash
is doing at the time we might be able to reproduce the bug for
ourselves.  strace doesn't really help us with that.

Most of the time, if you have the source available for a program, gdb
provides much more useful information than strace (which often
produces megabytes of gobbledygook).

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Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk@mira.net

"We are excited and optimistic about its usage going 
forward and, yes, we can teach penguins the military 
close-order drill", Mark Norton, US Department of Defense. 
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