Acronis Software: Troubleshooting Application Crashes

Make sure that the antivirus software running in your environment does not block Acronis products. See Acronis Software: Making Acronis Products Compatible with Antivirus Software

Under specific circumstances software may crash. It is very important to report a crash instead of trying to workaround it. Normal workflow for a crash problem is the following:

Crash happens.
Support reports crash to developers and provides them crash dumps.
Developers investigate the dumps and find root causes.
Fixes are implemented.

In order for our development team to troubleshoot a crash, they need process dumps and other logs listed in this article.

What information needs to be gathered:

1. Step by step description of the issue

2. Log of the operation which caused the crash

3. Crash Dump. Select section corresponding to your operating system.

Windows

Product closes unexpectedly
You're abruptly forwarded to the welcome screen while performing an operation (e.g. creation a backup plan, browsing vault etc.)
Service starts and stops unexpectedly.

For the list Acronis processes please check the following articles:

Acronis Backup Cloud: Windows Processes and Services
Acronis True Image 2020: Windows services and processes
Acronis True Image 2019: Windows services and processes
Acronis True Image 2018: Processes and Services
Acronis Backup 11.7/11.5: Windows Services and Processes
Acronis Backup 12: Windows Processes and Services
Acronis Backup 12.5: Windows services and processes
Acronis Snap Deploy 5: Processes and Services

How to collect a crash dump:

Use the ProcDump Utility:

Download ProcDump from Windows Sysinternals site;
Create a folder where dumps will be stored (e.g. C:\Dumps\);
Unzip the archive and put the procdump.exe into the created directory;
Open Windows command-line: Hit Start -> Run and type in cmd;
Right-click cmd and select Run as administrator;
In CMD, switch to the newly created folder using the cd command:
cd <path_to_folder>

For example: cd C:\Dumps
Issue the following command:
procdump -e -w -ma <process_name>
where <process_name> is the name of the crashing process, e.g. service_process.exe

If you are collecting a dump of Acronis Storage Node (StorageServer.exe) with deduplication enabled please do not use "-ma". Use:
procdump -w -e StorageServer.exe
Reproduce the crash.
Collect crash dump in the same folder where you put ProcDump.

If Procdump command procdump -e -w -ma <process_name> did not write a dump file and stopped with a message "The process has exited", the crash did not occur in the monitored timeframe.

It is recommended to check logs of the crashing process before submitting a case. Sometimes errors in logs provide the root cause of the crash issue or can help to clarify the issue.

Sometimes there are issues when you need to collect dump of "service_process" that crashes randomly. If you use the ProcDump utility in this case and the service_process does not crash on the first run, ProcDump will exit with "process exited" without collecting the dump.

In this case, you should use automatic dump creation, see:
- Acronis Backup 11.7/11.5: Enabling Automatic Dump Creation for Acronis Processes
- Acronis Backup Cloud: Enabling Automatic Dump Creation for Acronis Processes
- Acronis True Image: Collecting Application Dump.

You can also set up Just-in-time debugging (AeDebug Windows option) to collect crash dump automatically in case of a process crash. Once configured, the system will invoke procdump automatically, without any user interaction, whenever an application crash event occurs and the dump file will be written automatically. Also, the system can be rebooted any amount of times and there will be no need for any extra action after each reboot to resume monitoring for crashes.

How to set up Just-in-time debugging: click to expand

1) Download ProcDump from Windows Sysinternals site. Select a folder to put procdump.exe in, e.g. C:\procdump.

You should choose a folder where procdump.exe can be kept until the support ticket is fully investigated, resolved and solution is created and verified. The path to procdump need to remain unchanged because of the way we will be collecting dumps, described further below

2) Choose an existing directory or create a new directory for storing crash memory dumps, for example, C:\procdump. It does not matter if it is the same directory as where procdump.exe resides or not. For the sake of simplicity we use the same folder for storing dump files and the executable procdump.exe

3) Save the current Windows settings for Just-in-time (AeDebug) debugging to be able to roll back the changes after the investigation is finished and the issue is resolved and verified:

open Windows Start menu
type regedit and press Enter to open Windows Registry Editor
navigate to the following keys:
64-bit Windows:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug

32-bit Windows:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug

Right-click on AeDebug on the left side of the registry editor window and select Export.
Select a folder for storing the key, e.g. C:\procdump, click Save

4) Run "cmd" as administrator (Press Windows key to open the start menu. Type in cmd to search for Command Prompt. Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to launch Command Prompt as administrator)

5) Change current directory to the folder with procdump.exe. In our example it would be:

cd C:\procdump

6) Register procdump as the AeDebug postmortem debugger, indicating the path to the folder for storing memory crash dumps:

procdump.exe -accepteula -ma -i C:\procdump

This will tell the system that whenever any application crashes, not only Acronis, Windows system will launch procdump automatically and save a memory dump of the crashed process into the indicated folder. In other words, procdump will be launched only when an application crash event occurs, it does not have to be running all the time.

7) The text output of the previous command should confirm that procdump was registered successfully:

ProcDump is now set as the Just-in-time (AeDebug) debugger.

If there is an error or warning, please reboot the computer and repeat the procedure starting with step 4)

8) Wait until the issue with Acronis application crash reproduces

9) Check the folder specified at step 6 for files with .dmp file name extension.

If they are present, upload them to Acronis FTP server as instructed by Support Engineer

If there are no .dmp files, it means either procdump was not registered properly, or something prevented it from generating crash memory dump files. Try disabling antivirus and repeat the procedure starting with step 4)

10) after Acronis finishes investigation, fixes the issue and the fix is verified, undo the changes to the system settings of handling application crashes:

Download and unzip the archive unregister_procdump.zip
Double-click the file "unregister procdump.reg", accept the changes.
Locate the .reg file or files, produced at step 3) when the earlier Windows settings for AeDebug were exported from the registry. Double-click on these .reg file(s) and accept the changes in order to restore AeDebug settings

Linux

Mac

Acronis Virtual Appliance

Acronis Linux-based Bootable Media

Method 1

How to spot a crash:

The media will unexpectedly reboot.

How to collect a crash dump:

If the media crashes do the following:

	on BIOS systems	on UEFI systems
1	Boot to the Acronis Boot Selection screen	Boot to the black-and-white menu
2	Press F11	Select the appropriate boot option
3	Remove the word "quiet" and click OK	Press E to edit kernel command line
4	Boot the appropriate media: click on the product name (e.g. Acronis Backup in this example)	Delete the word "quiet" and press Enter
5	The media will boot to shell	The media will boot to shell

6. To enable network connections issue asamba dhcp -i ethX (where X is the number of the network interface that has cable connected, most commonly it will be eth0). Issue ifconfig and note the IP address the machine has.

7. Issue /bin/sshd to start ssh daemon.

8. Connect to the media using SSH client (like WinSCP or Putty, you will need it later to collect the dump because the GUI will hang)

9. Issue ulimit -c unlimited

The -c denotes the size of a core dump.

10. Issue export ACRONIS_SAFE_ASSERT=1

ACRONIS_SAFE_ASSERT=1 changes the flag to ASSERT_MODE_BREAK

11. Issue /bin/product It will start product GUI.

12. Reproduce the crash. Now the media will not reboot but hang or exit to shell. When the crash is reproduced (media gets unresponsive), try to click CTRL+SHIFT+F2 to get to shell. If that works please execute in shell: ls /
You can also use your ssh client to issue commands.

13. Issue find / -iname "*core*"
This will show you the path to core Dump to collect.

14. Use WinSCP (or another SSH client) to download the core file:

Install the WinSCP utility which you can get from http://winscp.net/eng/download.php
Launch the WinSCP utility on the machine where you installed it.
In the host machine field type your Acronis Bootable Media IP. The protocol should be set to SCP. Credentials are root:root
Collect the core file from the root directory ("/")

Method 2

Alternative way to collect a crash dump from Linux-based media. It can be used in case you are unable to open shell when the media crashes or you can use it to crash the process manually.

1) Press Alt+F2 to open new Terminal window

2) Issue /bin/sshd to launch ssh daemon

3) Issue ifconfig | grep inet to learn the IP address. The output will look like this:

inet 192.168.194.135 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.194.255

Note the first IP address, after "inet"

4) On a different machine, download Putty: https://www.putty.org/

5) Launch PuTTY. In Host Name field, type the IP address that you obtained at step 3, and press Open. PuTTY will connect to Acronis media environment

6) When system asks for login and password, specify login: root, and password: root

7) Issue ps | grep product.bin

Output of the command will be similar to

3348 pts/1 00:00:00 product.bin

The number in the first column is the process ID.

8) Issue the following command: kill -6 <process ID>

where process ID is the number obtained at step 7

Example: kill -6 3348

9) Crash dump will be collected automatically

10) Plug in a flash drive and copy the crash dump to it

4. Process Monitor log collected during crash

5. System report:

Acronis Backup Cloud: Collecting System Report
Acronis True Image 2017-2020: Generating System Report
Acronis True Image 2016: Generating System Report
Acronis Backup 12.5 and 12: Collecting System Information
Acronis Backup 11.7/11.5 Generating System Report
if this operation fails for any reason, you can use AcronisInfo Utility

With the information collected contact Acronis Customer Central.

For Service Providers - it is Acronis Service Providers Support Team

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45631: Acronis Software: Troubleshooting Application Crashes

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