I’ve been invited by the kind folks at ArsTechnica to be a contributor to their M-Dollar journal, covering Microsoft-related news. I just posted my first article over there, Static Driver Verifier finds bugs before they find you.
Stop over there and check it out!
Seen on my internal IRC:
[11:29] VS2005's call graph rocks [11:29] that's *so* useful [11:29] absolutely wonderful if you're trying to understand someone else's code [12:00] SkywingDev: is it a source level call graph? [12:00] yeah [12:00] how do you generate it ? [12:00] just right click something and say generate call graph [12:01] can follow it to any depth you want too
I got this message from Infone this morning:
Dear Infone Customer:
It is with deep regret that we must announce that Infone LLC will be discontinuing its enhanced directory assistance and call completion services effective December 31, 2005. If you have questions you may contact us by e-mail at customer.service@infone.com. Please be advised that this discontinuation does not change the service you have with your designated long distance carrier. It has been our pleasure serving you and we thank you for your patronage.
Infone LLC
Too bad; I liked them.
Drew Bliss from Microsoft posted a note on NTDEV today, in response to a question about debugging and CLR, and in the process pointed out a really interesting utility that ships with the new debugging packages called kdbgctrl. I decided to look into it.
It only works on 3790 and better, meaning Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x64 Edition, and Vista of course. Here’s the output from a Vista box (identical to my x64 box):
C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows 64-bit>kdbgctrl Usage: kdbgctrl Options: -c - Check kernel debugger block-enable -ca - Check kernel debugger auto-enable -cb - Check kernel debugger enable block -cdb - Check kernel DbgPrint buffer size -cu - Check kernel debugger user exception handling -cx - Check kernel debugger enable and exit with status -d - Disable kernel debugger -da - Disable kernel debugger auto-enable -db - Disable kernel debugger block-enable -du - Disable kernel debugger user exception handling -e - Enable kernel debugger -ea - Enable kernel debugger auto-enable -eb - Enable kernel debugger block-enable -eu - Enable kernel debugger user exception handling -sdb - Set kernel DbgPrint buffer size -td - Get a kernel triage dump C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows 64-bit>kdbgctrl.exe -c Kernel debugger is enabled C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows 64-bit>kdbgctrl.exe -ca Kernel debugger auto-enable: false C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools For Windows 64-bit>kdbgctrl.exe -cb Kernel debugger enable block: false C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows 64-bit>kdbgctrl.exe -cdb Kernel DbgPrint buffer size: 0x1000 C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows 64-bit>kdbgctrl.exe -cu Kernel debugger user exception enable: true
That last option, -cx, looks useful for scripting. Other than this, documentation is very light on this tool. It was mentioned a few times in the newsgroups and on the mailing lists, but not much else.
How to enable a remote kernel debugger connection on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 has some more information.