Develop Reference

Unable to get Application Insights to show debugging telemetry

I am a total noob with Application Insights, and sadly for a whole day of trying I have been unable to get it working at all. I tried with the following code:
this.telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient(TelemetryConfiguration.CreateDefault());
this.telemetryClient.TrackTrace($"Test", Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DataContracts.SeverityLevel.Warning);
But when I go to the application insights window and show all telemetry from the current debugging session there is nothing logged. One user said an ApplicationInsights.config file is missing (and that an empty one would do fine for debugging), I created one but it changed nothing.
Then I tried the simplest console app I could find - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/console . I don't have an instrumentation key, and from the hundreds of forums I read today, if you leave it blank it should still appear in the debugging telemetry. Alas, still nothing in Application Insights.
How can I get it working? I just want to see a single Trace message in the Visual Studio Application Insights window when queried for "debugging telemetry".

I used to work on this stuff and the way it generally works, the extension tries to figure out if it should watch for debug output, and if it doesn't recognize the project type, we do nothing (to avoid doign work in the debugger when we don't need to). in this case, console apps aren't a "known" supported project type.
IIRC, to get debug output I believe you need to do 2 things, of which you've done 1:
1) add an ApplicationInsights.config file at the root of that project
2) add an application insight resource id to to the csproj:
<ApplicationInsightsResourceId>/subscriptions/abc</ApplicationInsightsResourceId>
i don't think the resource id even needs to be valid, but if it does even better, because then other things can light up, like exceptions codelens, various links to the portal/etc.
you migth only need to do #2?
i think that if you do the above and restart vs/reload the solution, you should see the debugger integration try to do work when the debugger starts. (it used to!)

Breakpoints being moved Visual Studio 2010

I use breakpoints in debugging my C#/.Net programs. Very often I use many "When hit" breakpoints to display messages in the Output window and keep going, so I can examine what the program is doing while it's executing.
But I often find that after editing code my breakpoints get moved, producing spurious or incorrect results and I have to go and delete my old breakpoints and make new ones.
Searching for this on Stack Overflow I find other programmers having this problem when building in Release mode, but I'm building with a Debug configuration.
How do I make my breakpoints stay put?

Do you "share" files such as .csproj.user, .suo... with other developers of the project ?
If you are using a SCM exclude them from it, these files are not intended to be shared between different machines. To send them to another user with slightly different sources may cause this kind of funny mess.
More details about these files here :
Best practices for Subversion and Visual Studio projects
This kind of thing could also happen if you manually edit files, outside of VS (with Notepad++ for example) : try to avoid this when you want to keep breakpoints at the right place, VS doesn't like it at all.

There are many ways to examine the execution of program. Make sure you are generating full Debug Info for your project. Also check that csproj.user, .suo files aren't set as Read Only.
If these thing doesn't work, for your case I suggest you to use some console based output providing methods.
Try this one
Console.WriteLine("Currently executing this...");
The console here is the output window of VS. Select Debug from 'Show output from:'.
If you want to halt the execution, use this code
Console.WriteLine("Currently executing this...");
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
You should do conditional compilation of your code so that this doesn't get released with the final product. Console.WriteLine() will not cause any problem but System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break() will break application.

Simplest method for creating dump file for troubled process

I have found multiple ways of creating dump file such using windows utitlity userdump and adplus.vbs and a few others.
There is one option that I have found in task manager seems to be the easiest and simplest one open task manager + select the process + right click + create user dump. Is the .dmp file created using taks manager any different than the one created using win utilities?
Getting a user to create a dump file from task manager is so much easier than having him run the utilities.

Keep in mind that on a 64-bit OS, the dump created by Task Manager for a WOW process will be a 64-bit dump. This can cause problems, especially if you're debugging managed code. For 32-bit WOW processes, it's generally best to use a 32-bit utility.

Not sure what the difference is in the minidump created from task manager but if you want further information then the best thing to do is to create the minidump either programmatically and set the appropriate flags (note that some flags are OS dependent) or using Dr. Watson where you can simply check the boxes for the information you want in the dump file.
You can programmatically create the dump using MiniDumpWriteDump: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms680360%28v=vs.85%29.aspx there is a SO article on this: How to create minidump for my process when it crashes?
You can also setup dr. Watson to generate them for you when the crash happens:
http://kb.acronis.com/content/2191
the task manager solution is fine but generating them automatically is better IMO and generating them programmatically gives you better control and the option to dump additional information specific to your app.

One of the methods that we use for catching crashes or hangs on end-user machines is with the excellent ProcDump utility, and we write a simple batch script that either sits and waits until the app is unresponsive, or you can set other conditions such as when the CPU usage reaches a particular point. I give an example in this response.

How do I obtain a crash dump

I need to get a crash dump from a program. How do i get it?
The Program is written in C#. What exactly is a crash dump? When is it created? Where is it saved?
How do i read it?

Since you are saying C# I assume you are using the Windows platform.
A crashdump, or just dump, is the complete memory snapshot and other related system info of a process at a particular point in time. Dumps can be used to debug program crashes, hangs, memory and resource leaks and probably more problems I have not listed here.
In the case of crashes and hangs the first piece of data you want to obtain from a crash dump will be the callstack. This indicates the point of a crash or the point at which an operation blocked and never returned so the program sits and does nothing.
For resource leaks multiple memory dumps of a process can be collected over a period of time and examined to see which objects in memory are growing the most. This can help narrow down which parts of the code are causing the leak. To learn more about debugging specific issues I highly recommend this blog.
There are a few ways to capture a dump file.
Procdump (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900.aspx)
Visual Studio 2010 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/fk551230(v=vs.100).aspx)
WinDbg - Not to bad but more intimidating than other tools
With procdump you can simply do:
c:\>procdump.exe -ma YourProcessName.exe
The result of this command will be a full memory snapshot of YourProcessName.dmp written to c:\ . The -ma switch specifies dumping a complete memory image. If you are debugging a crash or hang you can likely get away without the -ma switch. Keep in mind without the full memory dump when you go to examine data structures you probably won't have valid data. Without the full memory dump you will still have callstack data which is often good enough for crashes and hangs. I typically error on the side of harddrive space is cheap so collect the full dump.
Procdump will also automatically take dumps at time intervals or when a specific condition is met. Read the documentation at the link above for more info. One switch I would recommend is -e.
c:\>procdump.exe -ma -e YourProcessName.exe
Instead of writing the dump immediately it will only write it when your program crashes.
With Visual Studio 2010 you can attach to the process with the debugger and save a dump file. (Keep in mind when you F5 debug your program Visual Studio automatically attaches). When your program is in a "break state" (breakpoint, unhandled exception, crash) the Debug menu will have the option to Save Dump As.... Then you can save that dump any where you would like.
Since you mentioned C# you are very likely collecting managed dump files. The easiest way is to use Visual Studio 2010. Simply, open up the dump file you created as you would any other file and begin debugging.
However, if that is not an option you can always use VS2008 or WinDbg with the SOS extensions. I do highly recommend Visual Studio 2010 though as SOS extensions and WinDbg in general have a pretty steep learning curve. To learn more about SOS check out these MSDN articles here and here.
Another reason I recommend using Visual Studio or procdump is that they will collect the dump file you expect. I recommend steering clear of Task Manager's "Create Dump File Tool". The reason being it will collect 64bit dumps of 32bit processes which are overly difficult to debug.

On Windows XP you can create a dump file with this utility:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e089ca41-6a87-40c8-bf69-28ac08570b7e&displaylang=en
Once installed browse to the installation directory and run
userdump PID
from the command line where PID is the PID of the process you want to get a crash dump of (you can find this in task manager, but you might need to add the column to the standard view).
This file can then be opened in Visual Studio - you just need to make sure you have the symbols built.
In Windows 7 just right click on the process in Task Manager and select "Create Dump File"

Use ADPlus. It comes with the Debugging Tools for Windows.
It'll create folders of crash dumps beneath it's home directory. You can analyse them using WinDbg afterwards.

Luke, a crash dump is a whole bag of data related to the status of your application at the moment the crash has happened, to dump it means to record all those information somewhere, typically in a text file.
a basic approach is to log the whole stacktrace when an exception happens so you could investigate later and see what method has failed and thrown which exception, what the parameter values were and so on. This is not really a crush dump but helps a lot in many cases.
There was something developed recently by MS about crash dumps and application crashes, I think it was related to Windows 7 actually...
see here: Application Recovery and Restart
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc948909(v=vs.85).aspx

You can also try using WinDbg
http://www.windbg.org/
A crash dump is when the contents of RAM memory and certain parts of the processor are copied to a file. This file is created at the critical point of an error and can be used to debug the problem.
This has worked for me in the past. It's a keyboard shortcut to crash dump in windows.
* Start Registry Editor.
* Locate the following registry subkey:
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Services\i8042prt\Parameters
* On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry entry:
o Name: CrashOnCtrlScroll
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1
* Exit Registry Editor and then restart the computer.
http://vinaytechs.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-get-crash-or-hang-dump.html

How can I debug an OutOfMemoryException in ASP.NET?

I am reading an .opml file and parsing it to generate a list of articles for each rss feed I subscribe to and thus add into this .opml file.
At times, when pressing play on Visual Studio (Run), I get an error (not exception) stating an OutOfMemoryException. This is before the application can even run (but has compiled). The page in question (the error comes in the output window with the relevant page) is the RSS Reader page, which calls the methods to do the parsing.
How can I completely fix this error? This error only comes up at times so it is hard to reproduce. Some information points to an issue with my dev environment, not the site or Visual Studio (This could mean another set of variables when live). Has this exception got any link to a potential memory leak (is it a possible warning)? Would memory profiling help (I have a memory profiler)?
Thanks

If I understand correctly, Visual Studio itself is OOM and reporting that it cannot start the debugg process. Is the devenv.exe process using a lot of memory? If you are under VS 2005 on a 64 bit OS you can try the advice from this post to make the devenv.exe use 4GB and perhaps aleviate your problem.
If is not VS itself that is OOM, you'll need to locate the problem. The culprit should be the one that shows up in task list with a large VM size. Running VS itself under debugger may help. Also, sometime system errors (like kernel resource exhaustion) are translated to OOM error.

How are you parsing this? You can run out of memory in a variety of ways, such as doing this in a tight loop:
for(....)
{
//Creates immutable strings faster than they can be garbage collected
nextXMLPart = nextXMLPart + " " + something;
}
How big is the file? If you are reading the entire file into memory that would do it.
Any how, I'd start looking at any loops that repeat a lot. And if that doesn't work, fire up task man and put break points in the code. Watch for where the app is when memory usage starts to shoot up.