Mugshot: Deterministic Capture and Replay for JavaScript Applications

Mugshot is a system that captures every event in an executing JavaScript program, allowing developers to deterministically replay past executions of web applications. Replay is useful for a variety of reasons: failure analysis using debugging tools, performance evaluation, and even usability analysis of a GUI. Because Mugshot can replay every execution step that led to a failure, it is far more useful for performing root-cause analysis than today's commonly deployed client-based error reporting systems--core dumps and stack traces can only give developers a snapshot of the system after a failure has occurred. Many logging systems require a specially instrumented execution environment like a virtual machine or a custom program interpreter. In contrast, Mugshot's client-side component is implemented entirely in standard JavaScript, providing event capture on unmodified client browsers. Mugshot imposes low overhead in terms of storage (20-80KB/minute) and computation (slowdowns...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: NSDI
• Authors: James Mickens, Jeremy Elson, Jon Howell
• Keywords: Computer Networks, Mugshot, Mugshot's Client-side Component, NSDI 2010, Unmodified Client Browsers