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https://github.com/danluu/debugging-stories

A collection of debugging stories. PRs welcome (sorry for the backlog) :-)
https://github.com/danluu/debugging-stories

debugging

Last synced: 25 days ago
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A collection of debugging stories. PRs welcome (sorry for the backlog) :-)

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        

# Debugging stories



Debugging stories are fun! This is a collection of links to various debugging stories.



## Non Fiction stories



[An unprecedented look at STUXNET, the world's first digital weapon](https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/)



[Atop segfaults](http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2014/03/02/sync/)



[Breakpoint takes 15ms](https://www.jwhitham.org/2015/04/the-mystery-of-fifteen-millisecond.html)



[Bug that hides from breakpoints](https://drewdevault.com/2014/02/02/The-worst-bugs.html)



[C64 Variable Screen Position crash](http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/index.php)



[Chrome development branch crashes with x87 FPU stack overflow](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/everything-old-is-new-again-and-a-compiler-bug/)



[Crash Bandicoot memory card corruption](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/my-hardest-bug-ever)



[Crashes only on Wednesdays](https://gyrovague.com/2015/07/29/crashes-only-on-wednesdays/)



[Custom Rust OS crashes](https://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/04/day-37-how-a-keyboard-works/)



[Debian package data corruption, but only on sparc64](https://web.archive.org/web/20060612203753/http://vger.kernel.org/~davem/cgi-bin/blog.cgi/index.html)



[Debugging an evil Go runtime bug](https://marcan.st/2017/12/debugging-an-evil-go-runtime-bug/)



[Debugging Insights](http://debuggingrules.com/?page_id=46) (collection of stories on separate pages, submitted to Dave Agans, the author of "Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems")



[Digital divider with wrong output](http://danluu.com/teach-debugging/)



[Email only goes 500 miles](http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html)



[How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%](https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times-by-70/)



[Impossible random number collision happened in practice](https://medium.com/@betable/tifu-by-using-math-random-f1c308c4fd9d)



[Incorrect sign masking operation](https://labs.spotify.com/2015/08/27/underflow-bug/)



[iOS file corruption](https://engineering.fb.com/ios/debugging-file-corruption-on-ios/)



[First Instance of Actual Computer Bug Being Found](https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/september/9/)



[FIRST robotics dashboard segfaults due to finalizer](https://www.lukeshu.com/blog/java-segfault.html)



[Fixing A Bug In An 18 Year Old Shockwave Game](https://mattbruv.github.io/ccsr-bugfix/)



[FriendNet / WoW message corruption](https://blog.makandra.com/2010/04/the-greatest-bug-i-never-fixed/)



[FPGA / CPU timing bug](https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2003/10/30/hardware-debugging-is-hard)



[Gdb set follow-fork-mode child doesn't work](https://nanxiao.me/en/use-dtrace-to-diagnose-gdb-issues/)



[git - pack corruption post-mortem](http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/pack-corruption-post-mortem-td7597765.html)



[Grep segfaults](http://blog.loadzero.com/blog/tracking-down-a-segfault-in-grep/)



[GWT test passes during normal runs but fails during coverage runs](http://ismail.badawi.io/blog/an-obscure-bug-story/)



[Java 8 webapp performance problems](https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2016/09/job-search-web-app-java-8-migration/)



[JVM has 6-7 second GC pauses](https://www.evanjones.ca/jvm-mmap-pause-finding.html)



[Linux kernel CPU contention](http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2015/09/05_a-kernel-debugging-story.html)



[Login only works when sitting down (and other stories)](https://books.google.ca/books?id=kse_7qbWbjsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA56). From Jon Bentley's _Programming Pearls_, section 5.10



[Mandrill stops sending messages](https://www.seancassidy.me/sherlock-holmes-debugging.html)



[Matrix transformation is 10x faster in a test harness than in the game](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/knowing-where-to-type-zero/)



[Memory-corruption / threading bug](https://nanxiao.me/en/an-experience-of-fixing-a-memory-corruption-bug/)



[Mouse won't move while processes are dying](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and-i-cant-move-my-mouse/)



[MS Money crashes](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=6103). Includes reverse engineered binary patch fix!



[Multicast to 237.0.0.1 acts craters performance](https://www.outerthoughts.com/2004/10/perfect-multicast-storm/)



[Network link instability due to DB caching policies](https://engineering.fb.com/production-engineering/solving-the-mystery-of-link-imbalance-a-metastable-failure-state-at-scale/)



[NFS bug hunting on GitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2018/11/14/how-we-spent-two-weeks-hunting-an-nfs-bug/)



[Node.js memory leak](https://www.tritondatacenter.com/blog/walmart-node-js-memory-leak)



[OpenOffice + Ubuntu|2009-04-28](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/comments/28) - "My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays" (bug is actually with the [file utility](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/file/+bug/248619))



[OS crashes on boot if machine was used recently](https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2013/12/17/heres-my-favorite-operating-systems-war-story-whats-yours/)



[PDP-11 crashes only when live cattle are being shipped from northern Ukraine and western Russia](https://www.jakepoz.com/debugging-behind-the-iron-curtain/)



[Perl can't read from TMPDIR?](https://blog.afoolishmanifesto.com/posts/investigation-into-why-perl-cant-read-from-tmpdir/) [(separate analysis of the same issue here)](https://blog.plover.com/tech/tmpdir.html)



[Polish S doesn't appear on medium](https://medium.engineering/the-curious-case-of-disappearing-polish-s-fa398313d4df)



[PS2 SDK doesn't zero the .bss segment](https://fobes.dev/general/2024/02/29/inline-assembly-dangers.html)



[Python hashes files differently on different days](https://dpb.bitbucket.io/unexpected-behavior-from-the-python-3-built-in-hash-function.html)



[Python/Flask/S3 absurd memory usage](https://www.jamesporter.me/2015/12/09/mysterious-memory-consumption.html)



[Register allocation algorithm in JIT uses extra register](http://bitfunnel.org/debugging-nativejit/)



[Script crashes before 10 a.m](https://darekkay.com/blog/script-crashes-before-10/)



[SIGALRM timer hangs](https://nativeguru.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/why-you-should-avoid-using-sigalrm-for-timer/)



[Signal fails only when returning from page fault handler](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7684824)



[Signal handling on 286 emulator for Xenix](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7684827)



[The Case of Veeerrry Slow Logons](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-blog-archive/the-case-of-the-veeerrry-slow-logons/ba-p/724275)



[SSH sometimes fails from cron](http://mina.naguib.ca/blog/2012/10/22/the-little-ssh-that-sometimes-couldnt.html)



[Stack corruption when using select()](https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/04/25/debugging-memory-corruption-who-the-hell-writes-2-into-my-stack-2/)



[Switch crashes machine despite not being connected](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html)



[The Debug heap that created bugs

](http://lectem.github.io/windows/heap/appverifier/detours/2020/01/02/The-debug-heap-that-created-bugs.html)



[The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining](https://predr.ag/blog/wifi-only-works-when-its-raining/)



[Tmux/vim strangeness](http://www.daniellesucher.com/2014/04/24/my-new-favorite-vim-tmux-bug/)



[Tracking down a CPU bug in Solaris across multiple OS layers](https://gist.github.com/vladak/d7edf765fe2763b698b06488230d5886)



[uint32_t gets truncated to 16 bits](http://kdc-blog.blogspot.com/2008/03/one-day-one-of-my-co-workers-stopped-me.html)



[Unit tests fail when run in Australia](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/issues/5017)



[Windows crash dump of nonsensical instruction](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=43293)



[HTTP/HTTPS not working inside your VM? Wait for it.](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2016/03/22/6nat/)



[The big handle gamble](https://x64dbg.com/blog/2017/11/04/the-big-handle-gamble.html)



## Fictional stories



[Coding Machines](https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/)



## Contributors



* Alexandros Tasos

* Arthur Axel fREW Schmidt

* André Luiz

* Bill Smith

* Brad Parker

* Bruce Dawson

* bussiere

* crazymerlyn

* Dan Luu

* Dan Nguyen

* Darek Kay

* Dima Kogan

* Dimitry (unknownexception)

* Florent Viel

* Howard Mao

* Jakub Kądziołka

* Jani Patokallio

* Jessie Weinstein

* José Manuel Díez

* Jouke Waleson

* Jyrki Vesterinen

* Kartik Agaram

* Kevin D. Clark

* Kirtan Gajjar

* Louis Vela

* Matteo Castellini

* Mark Jason Dominus

* michaelx386

* Nan Xiao

* Nathan Isom

* Nikola Brežnjak

* Pietro Menna

* Predrag Gruevski

* Rafik Draoui

* Ramon Fried

* Sean Cassidy

* Ty Lamontagne

* Vladimír Kotal

* James Porter



## TODOs:



* Improve formatting.



* Write up some interesting bugs: 40 hour hang, hardware bug caused by copying behavior of Intel engineering sample found on ebay, etc.