Enabling automatic dump capture from non-responsive Web Players

To capture diagnostic information from Spotfire Web Player services that stop responding, you can enable the automatic dump capture. This functionality is available both when running the Web Player on Windows and on Linux.

Before you begin

When running the Web Player on Windows: On each computer that is running a node manager with the Web Player service, download and install the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg). This toolkit is available from the following website: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/debugger-download-tools

For Web Player on Linux, no additional tools are needed.

Procedure

On the server computer, export the active configuration by using the export-config command. (For details on using the Spotfire command line, see Executing commands on the command line.)

Using the set-config-prop command, set the nodemanager.memorydump-after-failures property to an integer greater than 0. This sets the interval after which the memory dump will occur.

Table 1. Values for the Web Player auto-dump feature
Value	Description
-1	The automatic dump feature is turned off.
1	The memory dump occurs one interval after the Spotfire Server determines that a service is unreachable. The server performs ten verification steps, so this would cause the dump to occur after 11 failures to communicate with the service.
2	The memory dump occurs two intervals after the Spotfire Server determines that a service is unreachable. This would cause the dump to occur after 12 failures to communicate with the service.

The values continue to increase in the same way.

Note: For a large system, you may want to set a high value because the process may be unresponsive for some time due to blocking garbage collection.

Example:

config set-config-prop --name nodemanager.memorydump-after-failures --value 5

Import the configuration back into the database by using the import-config command.
Do the following on the server computer that you accessed in step 1:
1. Export and open the Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config file for editing. For instructions, see Manually editing the service configuration files.
2. In Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config, locate the following section:
```
<errorReporting 
		emailAddress="" maxMailLength="1000"
		includeDetailedErrorInformation="false"
		enabledMiniDumpCreationOnError="true"
		miniDumpPath=""
		miniDumpSizeLarge="false"
		miniDumpSizeBoth="false"
		killWorkerProcessAfterDumpCapture="false"
		dumpToolPath =""
		dumpToolFlagsSmall=""
		dumpToolFlagsLarge=""
		dumpToolFlagsBoth=""
/>
```
3. On Windows: Make the following changes:
  1. Set the dumpToolPath to match the location of the cdb.exe file that you installed in the prerequisites. For example, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Debuggers\x64\cdb.exe".
  2. Set dumpToolFlagsSmall to "-c ".dump /mhtpFidcu {0};qd" -p {1}".
  3. Set dumpToolFlagsLarge to "-c ".dump /mA {0};qd" -p {1}".
  4. Set dumpToolFlagsBothto "-c ".dump /mhtpFidcu {0};.dump /mA {1};qd" -p {2}".
  On Linux: Leave the dumpToolPath and all other dump tool settings empty.
4. (Optional) To configure other flags, see the descriptions of the other dump settings in Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config.
5. Save the file and then import it back to the server by using the import-service-config command.
6. Assign the updated configuration to the services by using the set-service-config command.
Restart the server.

Results

If a Web Player service becomes non-responsive, a dump file with the name hanging_process_dump_ServiceInstanceID_pidXX.dmp will be created in the C:\spotfire\nodemanager\version number\nm\logs directory of the node manager computer.