Tracing & Debugging Distributed Systems
Master advanced tracing and debugging techniques for diagnosing issues across multiple Erlang nodes in a distributed environment.
Debugging Distributed Erlang
Debugging a single Erlang process is already fun, but diagnosing issues across multiple interconnected Erlang nodes can be a real challenge! Why is it so hard?
- Concurrency: Many processes running in parallel.
- Distribution: Processes spread across different machines.
- Asynchrony: Messages sent, not always immediately received.
Erlang provides powerful built-in tools to help us peer into these complex systems.
Starting the Erlang Debugger
The primary tool for in-depth debugging is the Erlang Debugger. It's a graphical interface that lets you inspect processes, set breakpoints, and trace code execution.
You start the debugger from the Erlang shell. Once open, you can connect to local or remote Erlang nodes to begin your investigation.
1> debugger:start().
{ok,<0.88.0>}
2> % The debugger GUI will now appear.
3> % To connect to another node:
4> % debugger:start([{node, 'other_node@hostname'}]).
All lessons in this course
- Erlang Profiling Techniques
- Tracing & Debugging Distributed Systems
- Metrics & Monitoring Integration
- Memory Analysis & Garbage Collection Tuning