JP2002140211A - Information processor and its inter-process communication history acquiring method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To make communication history information between processes acquirable without using a special utility program. SOLUTION: When a process 21 for application program receives communication data, an internal function used as a logging handler 21a is activated and the logging handler 21a generates the communication history information and writes it in a shared memory 23. Meanwhile, a logging process 24 accesses the shared memory 23 every certain time and if there is effective communication history information, it reads it and saves it in a large capacity nonvolatile storing means such as an HDD 15 or an HDD 25 of an external device.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus for executing processing by an application program including a plurality of processes, and a method of collecting inter-process communication history information for checking its operation and analyzing when a failure occurs. . It should be noted that the information processing apparatus referred to in this specification is not limited to a general-purpose information processing apparatus such as a personal computer, but also various OA equipment including an image forming system such as a multifunction digital copier equipped with a computer function, and others. Electronic devices.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In an information processing apparatus for executing processing by an application program (software) including a plurality of processes, when it is desired to check the operation of the application software, particularly, to check the communication status between the processes, conventionally, necessary information is obtained. This was done manually using individual utility programs for sampling. In addition, in the case of a defect having low reproducibility, much time is required for data collection itself.

[0003]

However, when a utility program for collecting a communication history between processes of application software is used, the operation timing of each process is determined by the effect of system resources consumed by the utility program itself. In some cases, the intended communication history could not be collected due to reasons different from when the program was not used. Further, when the system goes down due to abnormal termination, it becomes impossible to collect data, and it is very difficult to analyze the cause of the abnormality.

[0004] In addition, there is another problem that a necessary communication history cannot be obtained without knowledge of the utility program. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve such a problem, and makes it easy to check the operation of an application program and an inter-process communication history in an information processing apparatus, and to set a system down especially when an abnormality occurs. The purpose of the present invention is to enable the collection of data necessary for cause analysis in a case where it is difficult.

[0005]

An information processing apparatus according to the present invention is an information processing apparatus for executing processing according to an application program including a plurality of processes. In order to achieve the above object, the information processing apparatus includes the following units. It is a thing.

That is, a plurality of shared memories (including a plurality of memory areas on one memory), each of which is capable of writing data and controlling reading and writing in a first-in first-out manner, Transfer information extracting means for extracting information on the transfer status of the communication data by referring to the communication data each time the communication data is received, and receiving the information on the transfer status including the reception time of the communication data by the process Receiving information adding means for generating communication history information by adding information relating to a situation; means for writing the communication history information to the shared memory; and accessing each of the shared memories at fixed time intervals to obtain the communication history information. If written, the communication history information is read out and written to a non-volatile storage medium. And a means.

In the above information processing apparatus, there is provided communication means for transferring data to another apparatus having nonvolatile storage means, and the communication history information storage means cannot write information to be written in the nonvolatile storage medium. In this case, it is preferable to have means for writing the information to the non-volatile storage means of the another device via the communication means. In these information processing apparatuses, the communication history information storage unit may include a unit that writes sample data indicating a data format of the communication history information to the nonvolatile storage medium.

Further, the communication history information storage means may include means for writing data for associating the ID number of the process with the name of the process in the non-volatile storage medium. Further, the communication history information storage unit may include a unit that writes data indicating generation and extinction of the process in the nonvolatile storage medium. Alternatively, these information processing apparatuses may be provided with means for performing operation settings by using data of a text file that can be sequentially changed.

According to the method of collecting communication history between processes according to the present invention, an application program including a plurality of processes can be executed on an information processing apparatus provided with a shared memory for performing first-in / first-out read / write control which can be assigned to each process. An inter-process communication history collection method for operating, wherein when a communication history acquisition target process receives communication data, the process refers to the communication data received inside each process to extract data regarding a data transfer status, A process is performed to generate communication history information by adding data relating to the reception status including the reception time of the communication data, and to write the communication history information to the shared memory.

On the other hand, a communication history information storage process different from the communication history acquisition target process reads out the communication history information stored in the shared memory at fixed time intervals, and stores the communication history information in a large-capacity nonvolatile memory. It is characterized by being stored in a storage medium. In this inter-process communication history collection method, the communication history information storage process stores the communication history information in a nonvolatile storage medium of another information processing apparatus when the communication history information cannot be written to a built-in nonvolatile storage medium. It is good to write on a medium. Alternatively, in the inter-process communication history collection method, the communication history information storing process may write sample data indicating a data format of the communication history information to the nonvolatile storage medium.

[0011] In these inter-process communication history collection methods, the communication history information storage process also writes, in the non-volatile storage medium, data for associating the ID number of each process whose communication history is to be obtained with the name of the process. It is characterized by the following. Alternatively, in these inter-process communication history collection methods, the communication history information storage process may also write data indicating generation and disappearance of the process in the non-volatile storage medium. Further, the operation of the process of acquiring the communication history information or the operation of the communication history information storage process may be set by parameters described in a text file which can be sequentially changed.

[0012]

Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. First, a hardware configuration of an information processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an example of an information processing apparatus having an inter-process communication history collection function according to the present invention. This information processing apparatus is configured as a personal computer (PC), and as shown in FIG.
1, a ROM 12, a RAM 13, a display device 14, a hard disk drive (HDD) 15, a local area network interface (LAN I / F) 16, and an input device 17, all of which are connected by a system bus 18 and UNIX (registered). It is operated by a (trademark) system OS.

The CPU 11 is a unit that controls the overall operation of the information processing apparatus.
Various programs are read from the DD 15 and executed.
The program includes an application program including a plurality of processes and a communication history acquisition program.
The ROM 12 stores various programs executed by the CPU 11, and may be configured by a rewritable flash ROM or NVRAM. The RAM 13 is a CPU 1
Reference numeral 1 denotes a work memory for performing various processes. In addition, it functions as a shared memory that is allocated to each process and temporarily stores communication history data.

The display device 14 is a CRT or a liquid crystal display (LCD), and displays various information. HDD
Reference numeral 15 denotes a storage device for storing programs executed by the CPU 11, execution results, necessary data, and the like. It is also a nonvolatile storage unit for storing the communication history, and the collected communication history information is finally stored here. The LAN I / F 16 is an interface for connecting the information processing device to the external device 19, and can exchange data with the external device 19 via the interface.

The input device 17 is a mouse, a keyboard, or the like, and the user uses the input device to input operation information. This information processing apparatus collects a communication history of communication data between processes as shown in FIG. 1 and finally stores the data in a large-capacity nonvolatile storage means such as the HDD 15 or the HDD 25 of an external device. It has a communication history collection function.

The function of collecting the communication history between processes will be described with reference to FIG. The first process 21 and the second process 22 shown in FIG.
It is a process (application process) of an application program that operates on the above. In practice, an application program often runs more processes at the same time, but two processes are shown here as typical examples.

The first and second processes 21 and 22 are provided with logging handlers 21a and 22a for generating communication history information as internal functions. When each process is created, a fixed storage area for writing the communication history information by the logging handlers 21a and 22a is allocated as a shared memory 23 on the RAM 12 for each process. The read / write address of the shared memory 23 is controlled by first-in first-out (FIFO) for reading out the previously written data first. In addition, if the last address and the first address are logically consecutive, and the continuation of the data written to the last address returns to the first address and adopts a ring buffer type write control that overwrites the first data, Good.

When the corresponding process receives the communication data, the logging handlers 21a and 22a refer to the communication data and extract the information on the transfer status including the information of the transmitting process without changing the communication data itself. Transfer information extracting means, reception information adding means for generating communication history information by adding information on the time at which the communication data was received to information relating to the transfer status, and means for writing the communication history information to the shared memories 23a and 23b Plays a role. Since the shared memory 23 to which data is to be written is prepared for each process, even when a plurality of processes (logging handlers) operate at the same time, there is no battling of data writing, and exclusive control between processes is unnecessary. It is. However, if the process is multi-threaded, exclusive control between threads is performed as needed.

When the communication history is collected, the CP
In U11, the logging process 24 is started. The logging processing process 24 is a communication history information storage unit that accesses the shared memory 23 at regular time intervals, reads out communication history information if it has been written there, and writes it to the HDD 15. If the information to be written to the HDD 15 cannot be written for some reason, such as the capacity being full, the information is written to the HDD 25, which is the nonvolatile storage means of the external device 19 connected via the LAN I / F 16 instead.

Next, the operation of each process will be described in more detail with reference to FIGS. FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a process of an application process in the information processing apparatus described above. FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the processing of the logging process. First, taking the case where the first process 21 receives communication data as an example,
The operation of the application process will be described.

When communication data is transmitted from another process to the first process 21, the first process starts processing of the flow shown in FIG. First, the communication data transmitted in step S1 is received. Then, before performing the original processing on the communication data, the logging handler 21a, which is an internal function, is called in step S2. Then, in Step S3, the communication data received by the logging handler 21a is referred to, and data on the transfer status is extracted. At this time, at least information on the source process is extracted. Also, the communication data itself is not changed at all. If the received data does not include the information of the transmission source process, the information of the transmission source process is extracted with reference to the transfer request received by the first process 21 and the like.

Subsequently, in step S4, the logging handler 21a adds the data extracted in step S3 to the data on the reception status of the communication data including at least the reception time information, and generates communication history information as packet data. Then, in step S5, the logging handler 2
1a is a shared memory 23 corresponding to the first process 21.
Then, the communication history information packet generated in step S4 is written. In step S6, it is determined whether an overflow has occurred during writing. If so, an overflow flag is set in step S7, and step S7 is executed.
Proceed to 8. If not, the process proceeds directly to step S8.

In this embodiment, if address control in the ring buffer format is performed in the shared memory 23, data can be written even if an overflow occurs, but data is erased in order from the oldest one. Therefore, if an overflow has occurred, a flag is set to that effect, so that the logging process 24 performs a correction process at the time of reading. In step S8, the first process 21 performs processing as an original application related to the received data.

In the processing shown in the flow of FIG. 3, steps S3 to S7 are performed by the logging handler 21a, which is an internal function of the first process 21, before the original processing on the received data. 2
The execution of 1a does not affect the processing of the first process 21 itself. While each process performs the processing shown in the flow of FIG. 3, the logging processing process 24 performs the processing shown in the flow of FIG. 4 at regular intervals.

When the processing shown in FIG. 4 starts, the logging processing process 24 first accesses the shared memory 23 corresponding to the first process in step S11. Then, it is determined in step S12 whether valid communication history information is stored, and if it is stored, step S1 is performed.
Proceed to 3. In step S13, it is determined whether or not the overflow flag is set.
Proceed to 4.

In step S14, the data of the first packet destroyed by overwriting at the time of overflow is discarded. Then, in step S15, data indicating that an overflow has occurred is placed at the head of data to be read, and the process proceeds to step S16. If no overflow has occurred in step S13, the process proceeds to step S13.
Proceed to 16.

Then, in step S16, the shared memory 23
Read the communication history information stored in the. Since reading and writing of the shared memory 23 is controlled by the FIFO, the data is read in order from the oldest data. And step S
In step 17, the read communication history information is stored in step S1.
If there is any data added in step 5, the data is written into the HDD 15 or the HDD 25 of the external device together with the data, and the process proceeds to step S18.

If valid communication history information is not stored in step S12, the processing up to this point is skipped and the process proceeds to step S18. In step S18, it is determined whether or not the check of the shared memory 23 corresponding to all processes is completed. If there is any unchecked shared memory 23, the process returns to step S11 to check the next shared memory 23, If the check of the shared memory 23 has been completed, the process ends. Since the processing of the logging process 24 is performed asynchronously with the processing of the logging handlers 21a and 22a of the processes 21 and 22,
There is no need to directly exchange data between the application process and the logging process 24, and the effect of the logging process on the entire system can be reduced.

Through the above processing, communication history information between processes can be collected and stored in a nonvolatile storage medium (HDD 15 shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 or HDD 25 of an external device). In this nonvolatile storage medium, if the write address is controlled in a ring buffer format,
Even with limited storage capacity, the latest communication history information can always be stored.

In this embodiment, the information processing apparatus having an inter-process communication history collection function is configured as one personal computer, and the application process from which the communication history information is acquired and the logging process are the same personal computer. Although the above description has been made with reference to the example in which the operation is performed, the configuration may be such that the two operate in separate devices.

For example, an inter-process communication history of an application operating in a digital multi-function peripheral having a plurality of functions such as copying, facsimile, and scanner is recorded in a logging process operating in a personal computer connected to the digital multi-function peripheral through a network. The information may be read and stored by a process. In this case, the shared memory may be provided anywhere as long as it can be accessed from either the application process or the logging process.

Further, the information processing apparatus having the inter-process communication history collecting function according to the present invention does not necessarily need to be configured as a personal computer, but may be configured as a functional block of the above-described digital multifunction peripheral or the like. It suffices to have an application process including a logging handler and a logging process process, a shared memory accessible from both, and a means for accessing a non-volatile storage medium that ultimately stores communication history information. However, in this case, a means for analyzing the collected communication history information is separately required.

In the embodiment described above, an example in which only the communication history information is collected and stored is described. However, not only the communication history information is simply recorded, but also information for supporting the analysis is simultaneously collected and stored. If this is done, later analysis can be easily performed. Therefore, an example in which analysis support information is collected and recorded together with communication history information will be described.

First, the logging processing process 24 shown in FIG. 1 executes an application process at the start of acquisition of communication history data and each time a fixed amount of data is written to a nonvolatile storage medium such as the HDD 15. Is recorded in the non-volatile storage medium. Sample data indicating this data format is word alignment or endian (a sequence of high-order bytes and low-order bytes.
This is data indicating a device-dependent data format, such as data stored from the lower byte (little endian). These data are generated as a packet of a byte stream.

When a device that generates communication history information by executing an application process including a logging handler is different from a device that analyzes the communication history information, the device-dependent data format may be inconsistent. By storing the data indicating the data format in advance as described above, the data format can be easily converted at the time of analysis, and the inconsistency problem can be avoided.

The logging processing process 24 generates data for associating the ID number of each process with the name of the process at regular intervals, shapes the data as packet data, and writes it to a nonvolatile storage medium. The certain time here does not need to be the same as the interval at which the shared memory 23 is checked.
It is good to be 00 msec or more.

In the system, processes are managed by ID numbers, so even in the communication history information generated by the logging handler, the processes are represented by ID numbers. However, it is difficult to understand what function each process has with the ID number. Thus, by storing the data that associates the process ID number and the name together with the communication history information, the process can be represented by the process name at the time of analysis, and the display can be easily understood.

Further, the logging process 24 checks the status of the process in the entire system at regular time intervals, and if the status has changed from the previous status, determines that the process has been created or disappeared and shapes the information as a packet. To write to the non-volatile storage medium. When analyzing the communication history information, by examining this information in a time series, it is possible to grasp the history of the generation / deletion of the process, and to use the history as data for assisting the analysis. Each of the data described so far may be stored as a separate file for each type, but it is also possible to add an identifier indicating the type of data to the packet and store it in the same file.

By the way, in this embodiment, a process is prepared when the writing to the shared memory 23 overflows. However, if the overflow occurs, a part of the communication history information is lost, which is not desirable. To prevent the overflow from occurring, the frequency of executing the logging process may be increased. However, even if the frequency is increased unnecessarily, the load on the entire system increases. Further, the shared memory 23 may be secured with a large capacity, but if it is too large, the capacity of the RAM 12 that can be used as a work area decreases. Therefore, the capacity of the shared memory 23 and the logging process 2
It is preferable to set the activation frequency of 4 appropriately according to the application and the operating environment.

Also, if the data format, the correspondence between the process ID and the process name, and the timing of recording the process generation / deletion history are too short, the load becomes too large.
If the length is too long, the usefulness of the data is reduced. Such setting of the operation timing of the shared memory and the logging process can be performed by a text file created in a specified format.

The user creates a text file in which parameters such as a key code and size of the shared memory, an interval for reading the shared memory by the logging process, an interval for acquiring process information, and the like are specified in a format specified in advance. Give a predetermined file name and save it in a predetermined location. This allows the information processing apparatus having the inter-process communication history collection function to automatically set the operation parameters by referring to the file, so that the parameters can be easily set.

Further, since the system settings can be changed only by appropriately changing the contents of the text file,
It is easy to adjust the parameters to appropriate values according to the application and environment, and it is possible to collect necessary data while reducing the load of the communication history information acquisition processing on the entire apparatus.

[0043]

As described above, according to the information processing apparatus and the inter-process communication history collection method according to the present invention, the inter-process communication history at the time of application execution can be obtained without using a special utility program. Can be collected. Therefore,
By using it to check the operation and debug during development, and to analyze the cause of abnormal termination of the system during product testing,
Development efficiency can be improved.

Further, if the communication history information can be transferred to and stored in the non-volatile storage means of the external device, the present invention can be used in an apparatus which does not have a large-capacity non-volatile storage medium. become. Further, by storing sample data indicating the data format together with the communication history information, when analyzing communication history information collected by an OA device or the like with a personal computer, a word alignment, endian, or the like due to a difference in hardware architecture can be obtained. Mismatch problems can be avoided.

Also, by storing data for associating a process ID number with a process name together with communication history information, it is possible to display a process by a process name at the time of analysis, and to analyze data that is easier to understand. Will be possible. Furthermore, by storing data indicating the generation and extinction of the process together with the communication history information, it is possible to check the operation status of the application also from the generation and extinction history of the process. Highly accurate analysis becomes possible.

Furthermore, if the system is set according to the contents of the text file, the allocation of system resources for collecting communication history information can be easily changed, and the effect on the entire system can be minimized. Since more accurate information can be collected, more accurate analysis is possible.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram for explaining an example of an inter-process communication history collection function and a collection method by the information processing apparatus shown in FIG. 2;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of an information processing apparatus having an inter-process communication history collection function according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating an operation example of the application process illustrated in FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing an operation example of a logging process.

[Explanation of symbols]

 11: CPU 12: ROM 13: RAM 14: Display device 15: HDD 16: LAN I / F 17: Input device 18: System bus 19: External device 21: First process 22: Second process 21a, 22a: Logging Handler 23: Shared memory 24: Logging process 25: HDD of external device

Claims (12)

[Claims] 1. An information processing apparatus for executing a process by an application program including a plurality of processes, wherein each of the processes is capable of writing data and controlling a read / write operation on a first-in first-out basis. Transfer information extracting means for extracting information on a transfer status of the communication data by referring to the communication data each time the process receives the communication data; and transmitting the communication data by the process to the information on the transfer status. Receiving information adding means for generating communication history information by adding information relating to the reception status including the reception time of the above, means for writing the communication history information to the shared memory, and accessing each of the shared memories at fixed time intervals If the communication history information has been written, the communication history information is read. The information processing apparatus characterized by having a communication history information storage means for writing into the nonvolatile storage medium by. 2. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a communication unit that transfers data to another device including a nonvolatile storage unit, wherein the communication history information storage unit should write the data in the nonvolatile storage medium. An information processing apparatus comprising: means for writing the information to a non-volatile storage means of the other device via the communication means when the information cannot be written. 3. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said communication history information storage means includes means for writing sample data indicating a data format of said communication history information to said nonvolatile storage medium. Information processing device. 4. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the communication history information storage unit stores the data that associates an ID number of the process with a name of the process in the nonvolatile memory. An information processing apparatus comprising means for writing to a storage medium. 5. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the communication history information storage unit writes the data indicating the generation and extinction of the process into the non-volatile storage medium. An information processing apparatus comprising: 6. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising means for performing an operation setting using data of a text file capable of sequentially changing operation settings. 7. An inter-process communication history collection in a case where an application program including a plurality of processes is operated on an information processing apparatus having a shared memory which can be assigned to each process and performs first-in first-out read / write control. A method comprising: when a communication history acquisition target process receives communication data, extracts data related to a data transfer status by referring to the communication data inside the process, and includes a reception status including a reception time of the communication data. To generate the communication history information by adding data on the communication history information, and write the communication history information to the shared memory. On the other hand, a communication history information storage process different from the communication history acquisition target process is performed for a certain period of time. The communication history information stored in the shared memory is read out at intervals, and the communication history information is Interprocess communication history collecting method characterized by storing sexual storage medium. 8. The method for collecting communication history between processes according to claim 7, wherein the communication history information storing process stores the communication history information when the communication history information cannot be written to a built-in nonvolatile storage medium. A method for collecting an inter-process communication history, the method comprising writing to a non-volatile storage medium of another information processing apparatus. 9. The inter-process communication history collection method according to claim 7, wherein the communication history information storing process also writes sample data indicating a data format of the communication history information to the nonvolatile storage medium. Interprocess communication history collection method to be used. 10. The inter-process communication history collection method according to claim 7, wherein the communication history information storage process includes an ID number of each process for which a communication history is to be acquired, a name of the process, and A method for collecting the inter-process communication history, wherein data for making the correspondence is also written in the non-volatile storage medium. 11. The inter-process communication history collection method according to claim 7, wherein the communication history information storing process also writes data indicating generation and disappearance of the process in the non-volatile storage medium. A method for collecting an inter-process communication history, characterized in that: 12. The inter-process communication history collection method according to claim 7, wherein the setting of the operation of the communication history information acquisition target process or the operation of the communication history information storage process is sequentially changeable. A method for collecting inter-process communication history, wherein the method is performed by using parameters described in a simple text file.