An Efficient Logging Algorithm for Incremental Replay of Message-Passing Applications

To support incremental replay of message-passing applications, processes must periodically checkpoint and the content of some messages must be logged, to break dependencies of the current state of the execution on past events. The paper presents a new adaptive logging algorithm that dynamically decides whether to log a message based on dependencies the incoming message introduces on past events of the execution. The paper discusses the implementation issues of the algorithm and evaluates its performances on several applications, showing how it improves previously known schemes. 1. Introduction Debugging 1 long-running parallel/distributed programs requires the capability of incremental replay, i.e., of replaying selected intervals of an execution. Because programs that last hours or days are common, one should not be forced to replay the whole execution from the beginning to isolate a bug that manifested itself in a well defined section of the program. To permit incremental replay, ..