How to debug a fatal system crash - [graphical loop DOTA2]?
- by Huw
Whilst playing DOTA2, I occasionally and apparently randomly seem to be experiencing a fatal crash where the display freezes fixed and the audio loops over approx the last .5 of a second.
Now, I'm interested in resolving this - but my trouble is I don't know where to start. The error appears non-reproducible (I've tried returning to games and deploying the same combination of events in hopes of pinning to to a certain shader etc), and I don't know which part of 'the stack' it might be coming from.
Variables that occur to me:
I custom build this system, did I do something wrong - is my PSU not providing enough power to the graphics card?
I am running Steam and DOTA under Linux, could this new software have a bug
Might it be something to do with my ATI Catalyst graphics drivers
Is some other background process interfering
I'm usually mid game when this occurs, so i quickly kill the power and reboot (when i'm lucky i can get back in with only 1-2 mins lost!).
So my question here relates to logs. Where should I start to look or how might I set up logs to help me pin down a fatal crash of this kind by recording moments up to / before a crash and is this likely to be something I should push Steam to do, or is there something at a system level?
Then perhaps I can return with a more specific question and perhaps even a bug report :)
Many thanks in advance.