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+<chapter id="debug">
+<chapterinfo>
+ <author>
+ <firstname>Chris</firstname><surname>Hertel</surname>
+ </author>
+ <pubdate>July 1998</pubdate>
+</chapterinfo>
+
+<title>The samba DEBUG system</title>
+
+<sect1>
+<title>New Output Syntax</title>
+
+<para>
+ The syntax of a debugging log file is represented as:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ &gt;debugfile&lt; :== { &gt;debugmsg&lt; }
+
+ &gt;debugmsg&lt; :== &gt;debughdr&lt; '\n' &gt;debugtext&lt;
+
+ &gt;debughdr&lt; :== '[' TIME ',' LEVEL ']' FILE ':' [FUNCTION] '(' LINE ')'
+
+ &gt;debugtext&lt; :== { &gt;debugline&lt; }
+
+ &gt;debugline&lt; :== TEXT '\n'
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+TEXT is a string of characters excluding the newline character.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+LEVEL is the DEBUG level of the message (an integer in the range
+ 0..10).
+</para>
+
+<para>
+TIME is a timestamp.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+FILE is the name of the file from which the debug message was
+generated.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+FUNCTION is the function from which the debug message was generated.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+LINE is the line number of the debug statement that generated the
+message.
+</para>
+
+<para>Basically, what that all means is:</para>
+<orderedlist>
+<listitem><para>
+A debugging log file is made up of debug messages.
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+Each debug message is made up of a header and text. The header is
+separated from the text by a newline.
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+The header begins with the timestamp and debug level of the
+message enclosed in brackets. The filename, function, and line
+number at which the message was generated follow. The filename is
+terminated by a colon, and the function name is terminated by the
+parenthesis which contain the line number. Depending upon the
+compiler, the function name may be missing (it is generated by the
+__FUNCTION__ macro, which is not universally implemented, dangit).
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+The message text is made up of zero or more lines, each terminated
+by a newline.
+</para></listitem>
+</orderedlist>
+
+<para>Here's some example output:</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ [1998/08/03 12:55:25, 1] nmbd.c:(659)
+ Netbios nameserver version 1.9.19-prealpha started.
+ Copyright Andrew Tridgell 1994-1997
+ [1998/08/03 12:55:25, 3] loadparm.c:(763)
+ Initializing global parameters
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+Note that in the above example the function names are not listed on
+the header line. That's because the example above was generated on an
+SGI Indy, and the SGI compiler doesn't support the __FUNCTION__ macro.
+</para>
+
+</sect1>
+
+<sect1>
+<title>The DEBUG() Macro</title>
+
+<para>
+Use of the DEBUG() macro is unchanged. DEBUG() takes two parameters.
+The first is the message level, the second is the body of a function
+call to the Debug1() function.
+</para>
+
+<para>That's confusing.</para>
+
+<para>Here's an example which may help a bit. If you would write</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+printf( "This is a %s message.\n", "debug" );
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+to send the output to stdout, then you would write
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+DEBUG( 0, ( "This is a %s message.\n", "debug" ) );
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+to send the output to the debug file. All of the normal printf()
+formatting escapes work.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Note that in the above example the DEBUG message level is set to 0.
+Messages at level 0 always print. Basically, if the message level is
+less than or equal to the global value DEBUGLEVEL, then the DEBUG
+statement is processed.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The output of the above example would be something like:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ [1998/07/30 16:00:51, 0] file.c:function(128)
+ This is a debug message.
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+Each call to DEBUG() creates a new header *unless* the output produced
+by the previous call to DEBUG() did not end with a '\n'. Output to the
+debug file is passed through a formatting buffer which is flushed
+every time a newline is encountered. If the buffer is not empty when
+DEBUG() is called, the new input is simply appended.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+...but that's really just a Kludge. It was put in place because
+DEBUG() has been used to write partial lines. Here's a simple (dumb)
+example of the kind of thing I'm talking about:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ DEBUG( 0, ("The test returned " ) );
+ if( test() )
+ DEBUG(0, ("True") );
+ else
+ DEBUG(0, ("False") );
+ DEBUG(0, (".\n") );
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+Without the format buffer, the output (assuming test() returned true)
+would look like this:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ [1998/07/30 16:00:51, 0] file.c:function(256)
+ The test returned
+ [1998/07/30 16:00:51, 0] file.c:function(258)
+ True
+ [1998/07/30 16:00:51, 0] file.c:function(261)
+ .
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>Which isn't much use. The format buffer kludge fixes this problem.
+</para>
+
+</sect1>
+
+<sect1>
+<title>The DEBUGADD() Macro</title>
+
+<para>
+In addition to the kludgey solution to the broken line problem
+described above, there is a clean solution. The DEBUGADD() macro never
+generates a header. It will append new text to the current debug
+message even if the format buffer is empty. The syntax of the
+DEBUGADD() macro is the same as that of the DEBUG() macro.
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ DEBUG( 0, ("This is the first line.\n" ) );
+ DEBUGADD( 0, ("This is the second line.\nThis is the third line.\n" ) );
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>Produces</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ [1998/07/30 16:00:51, 0] file.c:function(512)
+ This is the first line.
+ This is the second line.
+ This is the third line.
+</programlisting></para>
+
+</sect1>
+
+<sect1>
+<title>The DEBUGLVL() Macro</title>
+
+<para>
+One of the problems with the DEBUG() macro was that DEBUG() lines
+tended to get a bit long. Consider this example from
+nmbd_sendannounce.c:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ DEBUG(3,("send_local_master_announcement: type %x for name %s on subnet %s for workgroup %s\n",
+ type, global_myname, subrec->subnet_name, work->work_group));
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+One solution to this is to break it down using DEBUG() and DEBUGADD(),
+as follows:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ DEBUG( 3, ( "send_local_master_announcement: " ) );
+ DEBUGADD( 3, ( "type %x for name %s ", type, global_myname ) );
+ DEBUGADD( 3, ( "on subnet %s ", subrec->subnet_name ) );
+ DEBUGADD( 3, ( "for workgroup %s\n", work->work_group ) );
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+A similar, but arguably nicer approach is to use the DEBUGLVL() macro.
+This macro returns True if the message level is less than or equal to
+the global DEBUGLEVEL value, so:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ if( DEBUGLVL( 3 ) )
+ {
+ dbgtext( "send_local_master_announcement: " );
+ dbgtext( "type %x for name %s ", type, global_myname );
+ dbgtext( "on subnet %s ", subrec->subnet_name );
+ dbgtext( "for workgroup %s\n", work->work_group );
+ }
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>(The dbgtext() function is explained below.)</para>
+
+<para>There are a few advantages to this scheme:</para>
+<orderedlist>
+<listitem><para>
+The test is performed only once.
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+You can allocate variables off of the stack that will only be used
+within the DEBUGLVL() block.
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+Processing that is only relevant to debug output can be contained
+within the DEBUGLVL() block.
+</para></listitem>
+</orderedlist>
+
+</sect1>
+
+<sect1>
+<title>New Functions</title>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>dbgtext()</title>
+<para>
+This function prints debug message text to the debug file (and
+possibly to syslog) via the format buffer. The function uses a
+variable argument list just like printf() or Debug1(). The
+input is printed into a buffer using the vslprintf() function,
+and then passed to format_debug_text().
+
+If you use DEBUGLVL() you will probably print the body of the
+message using dbgtext().
+</para>
+</sect2>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>dbghdr()</title>
+<para>
+This is the function that writes a debug message header.
+Headers are not processed via the format buffer. Also note that
+if the format buffer is not empty, a call to dbghdr() will not
+produce any output. See the comments in dbghdr() for more info.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+It is not likely that this function will be called directly. It
+is used by DEBUG() and DEBUGADD().
+</para>
+</sect2>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>format_debug_text()</title>
+<para>
+This is a static function in debug.c. It stores the output text
+for the body of the message in a buffer until it encounters a
+newline. When the newline character is found, the buffer is
+written to the debug file via the Debug1() function, and the
+buffer is reset. This allows us to add the indentation at the
+beginning of each line of the message body, and also ensures
+that the output is written a line at a time (which cleans up
+syslog output).
+</para>
+</sect2>
+</sect1>
+</chapter>