Crash logs generated by iPhone Simulator? - iphone

Are there any crash logs generated by iPhone Simulator?
the Simulator crashes a lot but not leaving any traces in Console... the crash log will be useful.

The console will show the NSLog() output from an app running in the simulator. The crash logs are saved to file.
I have found some in my home directory under
~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/
They have a file extension of .crash
Something I haven't yet figured out is how to get them to generate even if the debugger grabs the EXC_BAD_ACCESS signal.
Update
Currently, (OSX 10.11.6), the .crash logs in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports, are when the emulator itself crashes. Logs for an app crashing (but the emulator device is still running fine), are in:
~/Library/Logs/CoreSimulator
Per crash, there is a sub-folder with a unique id. Sort by date, so that your recent crash is the first sub-folder. Inside that, start by looking at stderr.log and system.log.
Also directly under CoreSimulator, see CoreSimulator.log and Simulator.log.

I am pretty sure that you can see this in the OS X Console app located in Utilities. If I'm wrong though, be sure to vote me the heck down so I delete this.
UPDATE:
Specifically (as of OSX 10.11.6),
When an app crashes on emulator, a subfolder (with a unique id) is added to:
~/Library/Logs/CoreSimulator
Within that, start by examining stderr.log and system.log.
When the emulator itself crashes, a subfolder is added to:
~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
Don't confuse this path with
/Library/Logs
(lacking ~ at start), which has different reports about your mac.

Here’s something that worked for me in a special case... My app was crashing with SIGKILL as it terminated. I would see the exception in main.m for a few seconds, and then the app would finish terminating – thus, no chance to get the back trace.
I did a lot of searching on “where does simulator store its crash logs” and never managed to find an answer. However, the following trick came in quite handy and I was able to grab the crash log on the fly:
Basically, open /Applications/Utilities/CrashReporterPrefs.app and change the setting to “Developer”. This will cause CrashReporter to display a popup with the crash log after your app crashes.
I found this in the “Viewing iOS Simulator Console and Crash Logs” section in this doc from Apple:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Xcode/Conceptual/ios_development_workflow/125-Using_iOS_Simulator/ios_simulator_application.html

The crash crash logs will appear under ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter.
If the iPhone simulator program crashes (not the iPhone app running within the simulator), then there will be an entry for iPhoneSimulator.
If the iPhone App within the simulator crashes, the crash log will appear with the display name of the app.
When Xcode gets crash logs from a connected device, it stores them in sub-folders of ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice

This is much more reliable. In only a few steps I was able to find the source line number & method name:
cd to the dir having the .app & .dSYM files
run /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/libexec/gdb/gdb-arm-apple-darwin MyApp.app/MyApp
set print asm-demangle on
set print symbol-filename on
p/a 0×00015c64 -> address got by opening the crash log in “Console” app or just double clicking the the .crash file.

For me, it was an expression that I had added to the debugger watch window. When a breakpoint was getting hit, the bad expression was causing XCode to segfault.

You may also want to take a look at this related answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14984297/679240
None of the answers above worked on the "Big Sur" OS version. The only way to find the log was through the "Console" app (Application/Utilities/Console)

Related

Print text to crash file in Swift

I am trying to run a build of a macOS app on a virtual machine. Currently the app is crashing at launch and there is no way for me to diagnose the problem without an output. I noticed that a crash report is generated at "/Users/User/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports".
Is there a way to "print" to the Crash Report so I could know which functions executed before the crash?
Xcode can not detect the cause of the crash if the crash happens before attaching the debugger.
So you may consider using the macOS built-in Console app to check log and activities which locates in:
/System/Applications/Utilities
Then you can see the crash logs and other logs in a live mode :)
Here is a quick tutorial for the Console app

Are logs made with NSLog or CCLog stored in the iPhone? Can I retrieve them?

When testing my iOS application on a device connected to Xcode, logs from NSLog or CCLog appear in the console, which is very useful for me to debug.
When the device is not connected to Xcode, obviously I don't get such logs. And when it crashes, I simply don't know why.
Because of this, I made a question here: Is there an output log like Xcode's available locally in my iPhone?. But I have noticed that those "Device Logs" are not the logs I expected. In fact, they are greatly different from the logs I see in my Xcode console, and none of them reflects a NSLog or CCLog I have done in my project. So I guess I was looking in the wrong place.
Are NSLogs or CCLogs stored somewhere I can retrieve? I don't really understand the "Device Logs", but they really don't seem to tell me anything useful or specific.
Connect your device to your computer and in XCode, windows Organizer, you can see the devices. You can select your device and then click on Console. It should show you all the NSLog statements
Your crashes are logged in your device so you can retrieve them when you connect your phone to the XCode.
1 - Plug it in
2 - Open you XCode and go to Organizer (cmd + shift + 2)
3 - Click on Devices and then on the upper left click on Device Logs.
To add something to the other (pretty standard) answers, here's a solution for which you don't need Xcode: the idevicesyslog utility from the libimobiledevice library can also display all logs.
Bonus: if you have a jailbroken phone, you can install syslogd from Cydia and all your syslog will be saved to a file named /var/log/syslog.
Best option is to run your app from Xcode connected to a real device and look at console output (Shift-Command-Y to display/hide console view by default).
Second best option is to connect device afterwards to your mac and use iPhone Configuration Utility to view your app specific console log.
Third best option is to use some 3rd party iPhone app, which can read console log in the device (when you're on field trip or something). Warning: I made the "Console On Device" app just for this purpose, needed to debug crashes while travelling. It can display app specific logs and allows emailing them.
In my experience, most users never look at logs, so they are useless and just waste time, space, and battery. Some people look at the logs and get worried for no good reason at all, give you bad reviews ("I looked at the logs and there are lots of bugs in the code"), all with no benefit to anyone.
So get rid of the NSLogs. Best to define a macro that does NSLog in a debug build and nothing in a release build. There shouldn't be any NSLog in your source code except for that macro.

iPhone crash logs

I have an app in ad-hoc mode and it crash right after starts. I have access to Xcode and i try to find crash log like here: iPhone crash log?
But i have no crash log from this app. Why?
Right after app starts i can see Default.png and few second later it crash, i've never even see the mainViewController. How do get a crashlog? How to detect this error? I don't have an access to source code. I have only ad-hoc distribution.
Problem not occurs on every devices. AFAIK this is only 3GS problem. Strange.
Instead of looking for the crash log, try connecting your phone to xcode but look at the Console screen instead, run the app and you should see output on the console, see if you get an error message there.
For users who don't have access to Xcode or are running on a PC you can download Apple's iPhone Configuration Utility which also gives you access to the device console.

crash - where to start?

I have an app that is crashing on the device (works well in the simulator) which leads me to assume that maybe it's a memory issue...
When it crashes, there is no message whatsoever reported in the console.
It does not crash each time a certain action is taken, it crashes at different points of time always after the app has been running and in use for some time.
I know I'm supposed to ask a more specific question - but if anybody is able to tell me where to start trying to track down a crash that does not report in the console, I would really appreciate it!
I am now using the latest version of XCode (4.2)
Thanks in advance...
It very-well could be a memory issue. If that is where you want to start your diagnostics, you can use the built-in Xcode profiler. In Xcode Product->Profile will get you started.
Maybe setting the NSZombiesEnabled value to YES in Project -> Edit Active Executable -> Arguments -> Variables is also helping; this will show you memory access errors based on accessing released objects. But in that case you should at least get a SIG_ABRT or BAD_ACCESS error ...
You can also log when the app receives a memory warning in the didReceiveMemoryWarning functions of your view controllers - this is called before the system is throwing out stuff when memory gets low. That of course could lead to a crash with nothing showing.
First, relax.
Then read this Technical Note.
Now, follow these steps:
From /Users/<username>/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData remove all folders.
From /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator remove all folders.
Clean your trash.
Remove app from device.
Build and run application on device.
Follow the steps that leads toward a crash.
Now, go to XCode->Window->Organizer and select "Device Logs" your device from the DEVICES pane. Select the most recent of these which has your application's name. Wait for XCode to symbolicate the crashlog. There are two possibilities now:
Its a low memory crash.
Its a memory management related crash.
If its option one, profile your application in Instruments.
If its option two, you should see the stack frame where you application is crashing (or your module's stack). This SO question will be very helpful
If you cannot understand the output (or you think the crashlog is not symbolicating - or that its not your code that's crashing), please post the crash log's crashing thread's stack here and I'll look into it.
PS: in the first section we do the first two steps to make sure there are no left-over .app/.dSYM files which might hinder symbolication later in the process because XCode symbolicator is not that intelligent.

When debugging with XCode, app works fine, when running it on device or simulator, app crashes

My application crashes when freely running it on a real device or in the simulator. When I'm running it with XCode attached, the app works fine.
The app doesn't give me any errors and since I'm not running it with XCode attached, there is no message sent to the logger.
Any idea of what could be wrong or how I could find out what causes this crash?
Thanks!
You can read about CFRelease in detail in the following thread
Cheers
If you just want to test in a device why don't you try through iTunes. Find the Target of your project in the Finder, then drag it to iTunes. You can then sync the applications. This is not a solution but an alternative to run the app on your device.
Thanks Aditya,
The crash logs in the Organizer are actually very well detailed and they even include the line of code in the implementation file where the app crashed. When going to that line of code it seemed that I was CFRelease -ing a ABRecordRef, which is an integer of some kind...therefore I shouldn't release it
The weird thing is that it didn't crash or complain while debugging, but when running it on the device it did.