Attaching windbg to a process (gameserver)
 

I was recently asked to attach a debugger to my game server to help facilitate in a more comprehensive crash dump analysis. It was a bit tedious at first so I figured posting something may help others in the future if they should need to do the same.

This website offers a good walk-through to get things rolling: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX106566

One of the larger points is that you need windbg 32bit because srcds is run at 32bit. That was a problem for me as the installers all forced me to go with 64bit since I was on windows 2003, 64bit.

I also had errors with the installation of the windows developer tools web download for net 4. So I went with this version instead, which installed nicely: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...s.aspx?id=3138

Of course, as I said before this was forcing me to the 64bit version but it installed the required .NET framework I needed to get the program running. After that, I found this website which had a standalone version of the x86 debugger: http://rxwen.blogspot.ca/2010/04/sta...120002633.html

Once that was downloaded and started, I attached it to the srcds process, typed G (Thanks TnT, Asherkin, psychonic), and things were rolling. I only mention this part as I actually forgot about typing G in at first, and began to panic as it kept locking up the srcds process.

So, the TL : DR version:
Download and install:http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl....aspx?id=3138\
Then download and run: http://rxwen-blog-stuff.googlecode.c...02.633_x86.zip
Finally, press f6, attach to srcds, type g to continue, and wait!

Re: Attaching windbg to a process (gameserver)
 

Good times :) I didn't help you much at all though - was just pestering Asherkin with my myriad of questions ;)

Thanks for the info and I'm sure others will find this useful... however, as Asherkin pointed out, if the problem is with the engine itself, there not much we can see from the dump files without the symbols which Valve doesn't supply for Windows and is cutting more and more from Linux...

But, if the problem is in SM or MM, the symbols are available for them. Happy bug hunting :)

Re: Attaching windbg to a process (gameserver)
 

I'm lazy and just run a local server and attach the debugger through it using Visual Studio.