[plt-scheme] Re: some progress in identifying cause of DrScheme file explorer intermittent freezing problem on Japanese version of Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 3

On Jun  4, Benjamin L.Russell wrote:
> 
> Actually, there is StraceNT, which actually works on Windows XP (see
> http://www.intellectualheaven.com/default.asp?BH=projects&H=strace.htm).
> 
> I had already downloaded and unzipped the application some while
> ago, but had not used it much yet.  If someone can tell me what to
> do with it, I'll be happy to attach it to a DrScheme process on my
> Japanese version of Windows XP to help diagnose this bug.

Well, that looks very close to the linux strace.  The way I use it is
to run an application with it (or attach to an already running
process), and keep the output window visible -- there will be a stream
of printouts going fast there but when there's something stuck then
usually the output will be also stuck showing the last system call
that causes the delay.  At this point you can glance through the last
few lines and see if there are any system calls that look suspicious.

[For example, the first time I used it successfully (a long time ago)
was with Emacs -- it would occasionally freeze in an annoying way.
When I ran it under strace, I noticed that it was doing stuff with
lock files, which were in my home directory, mounted from the
department NFS server (Emacs will create a lock file every time a file
is modified, and remove it when you save the file).  Since I didn't
need these locks to work across multiple machines, the simple solution
was to set things up so the lockfiles would be saved in a directory
local to the machine, and things worked fine with that.]

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!