What files to include when reporting crashes?

Symptoms

You experienced a program crash, or the program crashes frequently.

Cause

The most reliable way to report a crash is to provide a repeatable scenario. That means a step-by-step procedure is provided together with a well-defined starting context. This can take some effort to get right, but it has by far the largest chances for success.

In general, to make a scenario repeatable the environment is best reduced to be as standard as possible. This is a process of simplification and elimination. If possible, a scenario should start with a default BricsCAD user profile, a new drawing, no third-party plugins or user customization, and a default CUI file.

If it is not possible to provide a repeatable scenario then in some cases, we can deduce enough information from additional diagnostic files.

Solution

Submit a Support Request including files, such as:

  • crash_report.txt.
    Note:
    • The crash_report.txt file is created on Windows and, starting with BricsCAD V24.2.02, on Linux.
    • On macOS, there is the bricscad-YYY-MM-DD-xxxxxxxx.ips file generated by the operating system.
  • Crash dump (.dmp) file.
  • User profile.

    Your current user profile settings can be exported to a file using the Profile Manager.

  • Drawing file.

    If a crash is specific to a drawing, then such drawing will be helpful.

  • Describe the effect of the Safe mode.

    If the problem goes away when running in safe mode, it can be helpful to switch back to normal mode and disable or uninstall plug-ins and customization to narrow down the culprit.

  • Log file (rarely requested).
Note:

The word crash is often misused for other problems, so the analyst may ask questions to define exactly what happens. A hang-up or freeze is not a crash, and an extremely slow operation is not a hang-up. An operation which fails with an error but does not close down BricsCAD is also not a crash.

A crash report is written to the crash_report.txt file each time BricsCAD crashes. The crash report is saved in the BricsCAD startup folder. The location of this folder depends on how you start BricsCAD, so be aware that multiple files can exist on your system in different folders. If the program does not have permission to create the file in the startup folder, the file is created in your %HOMEPATH% folder (on Windows, typically is c:\Users\[username]\). Sometimes the crash report is generated without the program closing. Sometimes there is a crash without a crash report.

(Windows specific) In most cases, a program crash results in a crash dump (.dmp) file, which is generated in the same folder as the crash_report.txt. The creation of a crash dump file can be enabled or disabled depending on QAFLAGS bit 2048. Before V18.2, the crash dump was only created if QAFLAGS bit 2048 had been set. In more recent versions, the meaning of the flag has been inverted, and the crash dump file is now created by default.

BricsCAD can log each executed command to a text log file. The generation of this log is controlled by the LOGFILEMODE system variable. If LOGFILEMODE = 1, a log file is created each time a drawing is opened. The filename format is DrawingName_yyyy-mm-dd_hh-mm-ss.log.

BricsCAD log files are saved in the folder specified by the LOGFILEPATH system variable. By default, this is the folder pointed to by the LOCALROOTPREFIX system variable.