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Time Travel Debugging - Overview

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Time travel debugging logo featuring a clock.

What is Time Travel Debugging?

Time Travel Debugging is a tool that allows you to capture a trace of your process as it executes and then replay it later both forwards and backwards. Time Travel Debugging (TTD) can help you debug issues easier by letting you "rewind" your debugger session, instead of having to reproduce the issue until you find the bug.

TTD allows you to go back in time to better understand the conditions that lead up to the bug and replay it multiple times to learn how best to fix the problem.

TTD can have advantages over crash dump files, which often miss the state and execution path that led to the ultimate failure.

In the event you can't figure out the issue yourself, you can share the trace with a coworker and they can look at exactly what you're looking at. This can allow for easier collaboration than live debugging, as the recorded instructions are the same, whereas the address locations and code execution will differ on different PCs. You can also share a specific point in time to help your coworker figure out where to start.

TTD is efficient and works to add as little as possible overhead as it captures code execution in trace files.

TTD includes a set of debugger data model objects to allow you to query the trace using LINQ. For example, you can use TTD objects to locate when a specific code module was loaded or locate all of the exceptions.

Screenshot of WinDbg with Time Travel Debugging command and three timelines.

Requirements

Time Travel Debugging is integrated with WinDbg, providing seamless recording and replay experience.

To use TTD, you need to run the debugger elevated. Install WinDbg using an account that has administrator privileges and use that account when recording in the debugger. In order to run the debugger elevated, select and hold (or right-click) the WinDbg icon in the Start menu, and then select More > Run as Administrator.

The created trace file that contains the recording may contain personally identifiable or security related information, including but not necessarily limited to file paths, registry, memory or file contents. Exact information depends on target process activity while it was recorded. Be aware of this when sharing recording files with other people.

TTD.exe command line recording utility

In addition to recording traces in the WinDbg UI, there is a TTD.exe command line utility available to record a trace.

You may have scenarios where only the TTD command line recorder is required: recording on a PC without installing the debugger, advanced recording scenarios, test automation, etc. In these scenarios you can install just the TTD command line recorder through a URL. For more information, see Time Travel Debugging - TTD.exe command line utility.

Comparison of Debugging Tools

This table summarizes the pros and cons of the different debugging solutions available.

Approach Pros Cons
Live debugging Interactive experience, sees flow of execution, can change target state, familiar tool in familiar setting. Disrupts the user experience, may require effort to reproduce the issue repeatedly, may impact security, not always an option on production systems. With repro difficult to work back from point of failure to determine cause.
Dumps No coding upfront, low-intrusiveness, based on triggers. Successive snapshot or live dumps provide a simple “over time” view. Overhead is essentially zero if not used.
Telemetry & logs Lightweight, often tied to business scenarios / user actions, machine learning friendly. Issues arise in unexpected code paths (with no telemetry). Lack of data depth, statically compiled into the code.
Time Travel Debugging (TTD) Great at complex bugs, no coding upfront, offline repeatable debugging, analysis friendly, captures everything. Large overhead at record time. May collect more data that is needed. Data files can become large.

Video Training

To learn more about TTD see these videos.

Defrag Tools 185 - Ivette and JamesP go over the basics of TTD and demo some features in WinDbg

Defrag Tools 186 - Jordi and JCAB demo more great features of TTD in WinDbg

CppCon (YouTube) - Jordi, Ken and JamesM presented TTD in WinDbg at CppCon 2017

Trace file basics

Trace file size

The trace file can get big and the user of TTD needs to make sure that there is adequate free space available. If you record a program for even a few minutes, the trace files can quickly grow to be several gigabytes. TTD does not set a maximum size of trace files to allow for complex long running scenarios. Quickly re-creating the issue, will keep the trace file size as small as possible.

Trace and index files

A trace file (.run) stores the code execution during recording.

Once the recording is stopped, an index file (.idx) is created to optimize access to the trace information. Index files are also created automatically when WinDbg opens trace files.

Index files can also be large, typically twice as large as the trace file.

You can recreate the index file from the trace file using the !tt.index command.

0:000> !tt.index
Successfully created the index in 10ms.

Recording errors and other recording output is written to a WinDbg log file.

All of the output files are stored in a location configured by the user. The default location is in the users document folder. For example, for User1 the TTD files would be stored here:

C:\Users\User1\Documents

For more information on working the trace files, see Time Travel Debugging - Working with trace files.

Things to look out for

Anti-virus incompatibilities

You may encounter incompatibilities because of how TTD hooks into process to record them. Typically issues arise with anti-virus or other system software that is attempting to track and shadow system memory calls. If you run into issues of with recording, such as an insufficient permission message, try temporarily disabling any anti-virus software.

Other utilities that attempt to block memory access, can also be problematic, for example, the Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit.

Another example of an environment that conflicts with TTD, would be the electron application framework. In this case the trace may record, but a deadlock or crash of the process being recorded is also possible.

User mode only

TTD currently supports only user mode operation, so tracing a kernel mode process is not possible.

Read-only playback

You can travel back in time, but you can't change history. You can use read memory commands, but you can't use commands that modify or write to memory.

System Protected Processes

Some Windows system protected processes, such as Protected Process Light (PPL) process are protected, so the TTD cannot inject itself into the protected process to allow for the recording of the code execution.

Performance impact of recording

Recording an application or process impacts the performance of the PC. The actual performance overhead varies based upon the amount and type of code being executed during recording. You can expect about a 10x-20x performance hit in typical recording scenarios. Sometimes there will not be a noticeable slowdown but for more resource intensive operations (i.e. File Open dialog) you can see the impact of recording.

Trace file errors

There are some cases where trace file errors can occur. For more information, see Time Travel Debugging - Troubleshooting.

Advanced Features of Time Travel Debugging

Here's some of the most notable TTD advanced features.

Timelines

Timelines are a visual representation of events that happen during the execution. These events can be locations of: breakpoints, memory read/writes, function calls and returns, and exceptions. For more information about timelines, see WinDbg - Timelines.

Debugger data model support

  • Built in data model support - TTD includes data model support. Using LINQ queries to analyze application failures can be a powerful tool. You can use the data model window in WinDbg to work with an expandable and browsable version of ‘dx’ and ‘dx -g’, letting you create tables using NatVis, JavaScript, and LINQ queries.

For general information about the debugger data model, see WinDbg - Data model. For information about working with the TTD debugger object model, see Time Travel Debugging - Introduction to Time Travel Debugging objects.

Scripting support

For general information about working with JavaScript and NatVis, see WinDbg - Scripting.

TTD.exe Command line utility

The TTD.exe command line utility to record traces is available. For more information, see Time Travel Debugging - TTD.exe command line utility.

Managed code TTD support

You can use the SOS debugging extension (sos.dll) running in 64 bit mode to debug managed code using TTD in WinDbg. For more information, see Debugging Managed Code Using the Windows Debugger.

Getting started with TTD

Review these topics to record and replay a trace file as well as for information on working with trace files and troubleshooting.

These topics describe additional advanced functionality in time travel debugging.