This guide describes how to use the TotalView® for HPC debugger, a source- and machine-level debugger for multi-process, multi-threaded programs. It is assumed that you are familiar with programming languages, a UNIX or Linux operating system, and the processor architecture of the system on which you are running TotalView and your program.

This user guide combines information for running the TotalView debugger either from within a Graphic User Interface (GUI), or the Command Line Interface (CLI), run within an xterm-like window for typing commands.

The information here emphasizes the GUI interface, as it is easier to use. Understanding the GUI will also help you understand the CLI.

Although TotalView doesn’t change much from platform to platform, differences between platforms are mentioned.

The information in this guide is organized into these parts:

Many of you are sophisticated programmers with knowledge of programming and its methodologies, and almost all of you have used other debuggers and have developed your own techniques for debugging the programs that you write.

We know you are an expert in your area, whether it be threading, high-performance computing, or client/server interactions. So, rather than telling you about what you’re doing, this book tells you about TotalView.

TotalView is a rather easy-to-use product. Nonetheless, we can’t tell you how to use TotalView to solve your problems because your programs are unique and complex, and we can’t anticipate what you want to do. So, what you’ll find in this book is a discussion of the kinds of operations you can perform. This book, however, is not just a description of dialog boxes and what you should click on or type. Instead, it tells you how to control your program, see a variable’s value, and perform other debugging actions.

Detailed information about dialog boxes and their data fields is in the context-sensitive Help available directly from the GUI. In addition, an HTML version of this information is shipped with the documentation and is available on our Web site. If you have purchased TotalView, you can also post this HTML documentation on your intranet.

To use the Command Line Interface (CLI), you need to be familiar with and have experience debugging programs with the TotalView GUI. CLI commands are embedded within a Tcl interpreter, so you get better results if you are also familiar with Tcl. If you don’t know Tcl, you can still use the CLI, but you lose the ability to program actions that Tcl provides; for example, CLI commands operate on a set of processes and threads. By using Tcl commands, you can save this set and apply this saved set to other commands.

The following books are excellent sources of Tcl information:

The fastest way to gain an appreciation of the actions performed by CLI commands is to scan “CLI Command Summary” of the TotalView for HPC Reference Guide, which contains an overview of CLI commands.

For information on

please see Appendix C.