Notes from Support: Calling Support with a Domino server crash (Rip files and Quincy sidebar)

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Rip files and Quincy (sidebar)

In an effort to make client and server crashes easier to troubleshoot, Domino comes with its own debugger -- Quincy (QNC). Whenever a Notes client or Domino server crashes unexpectedly, QNC normally kicks in and generates a NOTES.RIP file (usually this file is located in the NOTES or NOTES\DATA directory, or in the DOS partition for the NetWare NLM). This file is a snap shot of the client or server's active threads right before the crash. A support analyst can then use the

to annotate the RIP file using SYM files (available in the

). These special files are cross-referenced by the annotator to retrieve the proper definition for a function call within a dynamic link library (DLL) or executable file (EXE). Once properly identified, the analysts use these function calls to search for "known RIPS" in the

.

With OS/2 and NetWare, QNC is the default debugger. UNIX, however, doesn't use QNC because it generates a core dump file that contains similar information to a NOTES.RIP file. QNC is also available for Windows NT with the following exceptions:

• QNC is available on the Windows NT/Alpha starting with Release 4.6.4. Earlier versions of Domino for Windows NT/Alpha rely on NT's Dr. Watson debugger.
• On Windows NT, Dr. Watson is the default debugger and not QNC.
  

QNC will be installed as the default just-in-time debugger when you install Notes or Domino unless there is already a registered debugger other than Dr. Watson (such as, Microsoft Visual C++). To enable QNC as the default debugger, type the following at a Windows NT command prompt and press ENTER:

QNC -i

Windows NT will respond with the statement "Quincy has been installed as the default application debugger."