Viral trace

摘要

Tracing of the interaction of third party processes on resources used by a program under trace is performed. A viral tag is associated with the program under trace. When the program “touches” a portion of memory, the memory manager associates the viral tag with the memory locations in this portion of memory. When subsequent processes “touch” the tagged memory locations, they acquire the viral tag and then spread it to other memory locations that these subsequent processes touch. The viral tag may be slightly modified so as to identify it as being based on the original viral tag but having been acquired by another process. Each time the viral tag is spread to another program, the viral tag may be slightly modified to indicate that the viral tag is now associated with another entity although is still associated with the original viral tag.

主权项

1. A method, in a data processing system, for performing a viral trace of a program under trace, comprising:
associating a first viral tag with a first thread of the program under trace in a data structure; spreading the first viral tag to a second thread by generating a second viral tag based on the first viral tag, the second viral tag being associated with the second thread of another program, different than the program under trace, and not a subject of a trace of the program under trace, wherein the second thread is a different thread than the first thread; tracking interaction of the second thread with resources used by the first thread using the second viral tag; and identifying a potential source of an effect on the execution of the first thread based on the tracking of the interaction of the second thread.