Application crash resist method and apparatus

• US 20090089621A1
• Filed: 09/28/2007
• Published: 04/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Zhang, Lifeng Levin
• Granted Patent: US 7,827,444 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/38
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0715 in a system implementing multitasking multitasking per se G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/327 Alarm or error message display

Abstract

Embodiments of an application crash resist method and apparatus including an abnormal application termination service and an exception handler are disclosed herein. The service is configured to broadcast messages to cause the exception handler to be loaded by applications, and the exception handler is configured to stall abnormal termination of an application having loaded an instance of the exception handler. In various embodiments, the exception handler instances further report abnormal terminations to the service, and to receive instructions on how long to stall from the service. In various embodiments, the method and apparatus further includes a tray application through which the service obtains user inputs on how long to stall an abnormal termination from a user.

Claims

1. An article of manufacture comprising:

a computer readable storage medium; and

a plurality of programming instructions stored in the storage medium, the programming instructions configured to provide to an apparatus;

an exception handler, instances of which are to be correspondingly loaded by applications executing on the apparatus as corresponding dedicated exception handlers of the executing applications, the exception handler being configured to have each exception handler instance stall abnormal termination of the application having loaded the exception handler instance as the application'"'"'s corresponding dedicated exception handler; and

an application abnormal termination service to enable a user to control an exception handler instance'"'"'s stalling of an abnormal termination of the corresponding application.

2. The article of claim 1, wherein the exception handler is configured to have each exception handler instance to stall abnormal termination of the application having loaded the exception handler instance by getting a message from a message queue of the application, translating the received message and posting the translated message back to the message queue.

3. The article of claim 1, wherein the exception handler is further configured to have each exception handler instance to report an abnormal termination of the application having loaded the exception handler instance to the application abnormal termination service.

4. The article of claim 3, wherein the application abnormal termination service is further configured to instruct a reporting exception handler instance to stop stalling a reported abnormal termination of the application having loaded the exception handler instance.

5. The article of claim 4, wherein the application abnormal termination service is further configured to instruct a reporting exception handler instance to stop stalling a reported abnormal termination, based at least in part on a user'"'"'s input.

6. The article of claim 5, wherein the programming instructions further provide the apparatus with a tray application to obtain said user'"'"'s input.

7. The article of claim 6, wherein the tray application is further configured to receive a notification of an abnormal application termination from the application abnormal termination service, and to obtain, in response, information about the abnormally terminating application.

8. The article of claim 7, wherein the tray application is further configured to obtain said user'"'"'s inputs based on the obtained information about the abnormally terminating application.

9. The article of claim 1, wherein the loading of the exception handler instances by the applications are responsive to particular exception handler loading messages received by the applications, and the application abnormal termination service is further configured to broadcast said particular exception handler loading messages to cause said applications executing on the apparatus to load said instances of the exception handler as said executing applications'"'"' corresponding dedicated exception handlers.

10. A processor implemented method comprising:

getting by an exception handler instance loaded by an application, a message from a message queue of the application, after the exception handler instance having been given control in response to an abnormal termination of the application;

determining by the exception handler instance, whether the gotten message is a stop stalling message from an abnormal application termination service or an indication of an amount of stall time has expired; and

if the received message is not a stop stalling message from the abnormal application termination service, translating the gotten message by the exception handler instance, and posting by the exception handler instance the translated message back into the message queue to stall the abnormal termination of the application.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising repeating said getting, determining, and conditional translating and posting, to continue to stall the abnormal termination of the application.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising the exception handler instance reporting the abnormal application termination to an abnormal application termination service, and receiving instructions on the amount of stall time from the abnormal application termination service.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising the exception handler instance terminating said repeating immediately or in due course, in accordance with said instructions, to allow the application to abnormally terminate.

14. The method of claim 12 further comprising the abnormal application service directly or indirectly providing information about the abnormal application termination to a user and directly or indirectly obtaining inputs from the user on instructing the exception handler instance.

15. The method of claim 12 further comprising the abnormal application service broadcasting an exception handler installation message to cause the application to load the exception handler instance as a dedicated exception handler instance of the application.