rr-debugger / rr-debugger/rr

Replaying trace takes a lot longer than recording

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Description

Summary

We're trying to use rr to debug a crash in Julia's garbage collector. However, replaying the trace takes too long, and makes debugging infeasible.

Commands

Recording the program with:

rr record --chaos julia -g2 mwe.jl

takes around 5-6min.

I've left rr replaying the program with:

rr replay

and it takes more than 15min.

Not sure if it matters, but I've also run this command in GDB:

handle SIGSEGV nostop noprint

to ignore segmentation faults than happen when Julia stops threads for GC.

Microarchitecture

Architecture:                x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):            32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:             46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:                Little Endian
CPU(s):                      36
  On-line CPU(s) list:       0-35
Vendor ID:                   GenuineIntel
  Model name:                Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8124M CPU @ 3.00GHz
    CPU family:              6
    Model:                   85
    Thread(s) per core:      2
    Core(s) per socket:      18
    Socket(s):               1
    Stepping:                4
    BogoMIPS:                5999.99

Reproducer

Unfortunately I can't share mwe.jl here due to licensing, but @Keno might have access to it.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the reported rr record --chaos julia -g2 mwe.jl and rr replay commands, and obtain the unavailable mwe.jl reproducer if possible. Compare recording and replay timing while checking whether the GDB SIGSEGV handling affects behavior; done means identifying a reproducible cause or actionable fix for the replay slowdown.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia, linux
Domain
devtools, operating-systems, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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