How to display a DateTime in WinDbg using SOS
One of the things that I’ve always struggled in the past while looking at some Managed Code and analyzing a crash dump in WinDbg using SOS was dumping a System.DateTime. Sure enough you can use DumpVC and get the actual “data” inside it, but that is not very readable. In the past I used the trick of using .formats for displaying it, but that only works when you are looking at one DateTime at a time, but it is incredible painful when you need to look to many. So finally decided to write a quick “script” to dump the DateTime with a single command.
So just for fun and to contrast it, lets look at the “hard way I used to do this before”, if you don’t care and want the better way just ignore “The Hard Way”section, so for this in my crash dump the DateTime lives at: 0000003692816498:
The New Way
As you probably will see below in “The Hard Way” and after doing that a few times, you get motivated to find a better way, and that is why I decided to write a quick little WinDbg scripts using the “Debugger Command Programs” that make this process very nice. Now I can run one line and get that super easy:
2014-10-21 21:50:27 (local)
Notice that in this case my script will actually dump the right date, including the fact that it is in local time. See the bottom for the actual script, or download the script from my web site at: http://www.carlosag.net/downloads/DumpDate.txt
The Hard Way
First you need to find the MT of DateTime, and like “everyone knows” that is in mscorlib.dll, then you call DumpVC, then you remove the flags from DateTime data to get the ticks (remember the magic number 0x3FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF)… and then finally you call the nice and handy “.formats”… easy, right?
Module: 00007ffab1741000
Assembly: mscorlib.dll
Token: 000000000200005b
MethodTable: 00007ffab1dc7af8
EEClass: 00007ffab17439d8
Name: System.DateTime
0:000> !DumpVC 00007ffab1dc7af8 0000003692816498
Name: System.DateTime
MethodTable: 00007ffab1dc7af8
EEClass: 00007ffab17439d8
Size: 24(0x18) bytes
File: D:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\assembly\GAC_64\mscorlib\v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\mscorlib.dll
Fields:
MT Field Offset Type VT Attr Value Name
00007ffab1dcac18 40000dc 0 System.UInt64 1 instance 5247181268704488069 dateData
00007ffab1db3768 40000d8 50 System.Int32[] 0 shared static DaysToMonth365
>> Domain:Value 00000..0 <<
00007ffab1db3768 40000d9 58 System.Int32[] 0 shared static DaysToMonth366
>> Domain:Value 00000..0 <<
00007ffab1dc7af8 40000da 40 System.DateTime 1 shared static MinValue
>> Domain:Value 00000..0 <<
00007ffab1dc7af8 40000db 48 System.DateTime 1 shared static MaxValue
>> Domain:Value 000000..768 <<
0:000> ? 0n5247181268704488069 & 0x3FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Evaluate expression: 635495250277100165 = 08d1bb90`2936ea85
0:000> .formats 08d1bb90`2936ea85
Evaluate expression:
Hex: 08d1bb90`2936ea85
Decimal: 635495250277100165
Octal: 0043215671005115565205
Binary: 00001000 11010001 10111011 10010000 00101001 00110110 11101010 10000101
Chars: ....)6..
Time: Tue Oct 21 14:50:27.710 3614 (UTC - 7:00)
Float: low 4.06155e-014 high 1.26228e-033
Double: 3.43715e-266
And also always remember to decrease 1,600 years from the date since the managed dates are not based on the same “starting year”, and they will always be off by 1,600 years. Now imagine what you are trying to do is look at 10 or 20 DateTime objects, it can become cumbersome.
Summary
It was quite fun getting to do this script, I learned more than I ever thought I wanted to know about DateTime and its internal representation and dealing with leap years and more. I’m sure the script could be written in a much better way (maybe using named variables/addresses as opposed to pseudo registers, etc) but I needed to get it done quickly. The actual task I was trying to achieve was to dump all HttpContext in ASP.NET and see what was the time when they were created (_utcTimestamp), will post a different blog at some point showing a handy script to dump HTTP Requests, System.Net.Connection, and other common objects that I get to have the pleasure to debug issues on the server side.
The Script
$$ WinDbg Program to Dump a System.Date...
$$ requires specifying the DateTime Address
$$
$$ Written by: CarlosAg (http://www.carlosag.net/)
$$
$$ Run as: $$>a<DumpDate.txt <DateTimeAddress>
$$
$$ Example : $$>a<e:\shares\public\AzureUX\scripts\DumpDate.txt 000007fef7411c48
$$ Uses Pseudo Registers t11-t19
ad/q *
$$ Read the argument
r$t11=poi(${$arg1});
$$ Now for the Date Time Magic... and fun...
$$ DateTime stores in a QuadWord Binary format using the last two digits to signal UTC and other flags
$$ Is UTC? dq & 0x4000000000000000
$$ so lets get rid of those to get the ticks dq ... time ... Mask with 0x3FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
$$ ticks in one millisecond = 10,0000, that means...
$$ seconds== ((0n10000) * (0n1000)) == 0n10000000
$$ minutes== ((0n10000) * (0n1000) * (0n60)) == 0n600000000
$$ hours == ((0n10000) * (0n1000) * (0n60) * (0n60)) == 0n36000000000
$$ days == ((0n10000) * (0n1000) * (0n60) * (0n60) * (0n24)) == 0n864000000000
$$
$$ First lets get rid of the UTC/Flags stuff to get just the ticks
r$t11=@$t11&0x3FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF;
$$ Now get the # of Days == day count...
r$t12=(@$t11/0n864000000000);
$$ Easy... we can get the Hours
r$t13=(@$t11 % 0n864000000000)/0n36000000000;
$$ and Minutes
r$t14=((@$t11 % 0n864000000000) % 0n36000000000)/0n600000000;
$$ and Seconds
r$t15=(((@$t11 % 0n864000000000) % 0n36000000000) % 0n600000000)/0n10000000;
$$ Now for the heavy duty of figuring out days... leap years and more fun
$$ DaysPerYear = 365
$$ DaysPer4Years = DaysPerYear * 4 + 1 == 1,461
$$ DaysPer100Years = DaysPer4Years * 25 - 1 == 36,524
$$ DaysPer400Years = DaysPer100Years * 4 + 1 == 146,097
$$ t16 will have the Years...
$$ the following lines will try to get the right number of years
$$ which is tricky due to leap years and so the math...
$$ first figure out the # of "400 years" + the "100 years" + "4 years" + "1 years" + 1
$$ Days... == y400
r$t16=(@$t12/0n146097);
$$ n... - diff 400years
r$t12=@$t12-(@$t16*0n146097);
$$ Days... == y100
r$t17=(@$t12/0n36524);
$$ n... - diff 100years
r$t12=@$t12-(@$t17*0n36524);
$$ Days... == y4
r$t18=(@$t12/0n1461);
$$ n... - diff 4years
r$t12=@$t12-(@$t18*0n1461);
$$ Days... == y1
r$t19=(@$t12/0n365);
$$ Last year has an extra day, so decrement result if 4
.if(@$t19==0n4){
r$t19=0n3;
}
$$ Here now we have in t12 the day number in the current year...
$$ n... - diff 1years
r$t12=@$t12-(@$t19*0n365);
$$ Finally!!! we know the right year
r$t16=(@$t16*0n400)+(@$t17*0n100)+(@$t18*0n4)+(@$t19)+1;
$$ Now determine if this is a Leap Year... we'll need that to get the right month/day
r$t18=0n0;
.if(@$t19==0n3){
.if(@$t18!=0n24){
r$t18=0n1;
}
.if(@$t17==0n3){
r$t18=0n1;
}
}
$$ Month and Day ...
r$t19=0n0;
.if(@$t18==0n0){
$$ .printf "non-leap year";
r$t19=12;
.if(@$t12<=0n31){
r$t19=0n1;
r$t12=@$t12-0n0+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n59){
r$t19=0n2;
r$t12=@$t12-0n31+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n90){
r$t19=0n3;
r$t12=@$t12-0n59+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n120){
r$t19=0n4;
r$t12=@$t12-0n90+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n151){
r$t19=0n5;
r$t12=@$t12-0n120+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n181){
r$t19=0n6;
r$t12=@$t12-0n151+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n212){
r$t19=0n7;
r$t12=@$t12-0n181+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n243){
r$t19=0n8;
r$t12=@$t12-0n212+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n273){
r$t19=0n9;
r$t12=@$t12-0n243+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n304){
r$t19=0n10;
r$t12=@$t12-0n273+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n334){
r$t19=0n11;
r$t12=@$t12-0n304+1;
}
}
.else{
$$ .printf "leap year";
r$t19=12;
.if(@$t12<=0n31){
r$t19=0n1;
r$t12=@$t12-0n0+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n60){
r$t19=0n2;
r$t12=@$t12-0n31+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n91){
r$t19=0n3;
r$t12=@$t12-0n60+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n121){
r$t19=0n4;
r$t12=@$t12-0n91+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n152){
r$t19=0n5;
r$t12=@$t12-0n121+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n182){
r$t19=0n6;
r$t12=@$t12-0n152+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n213){
r$t19=0n7;
r$t12=@$t12-0n182+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n244){
r$t19=0n8;
r$t12=@$t12-0n213+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n274){
r$t19=0n9;
r$t12=@$t12-0n244+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n305){
r$t19=0n10;
r$t12=@$t12-0n274+1;
}
.elsif(@$t12<=0n335){
r$t19=0n11;
r$t12=@$t12-0n305+1;
}
}
$$ Finally we have all the pieces!!! just print them...
$$ yy-MM-dd Hour:Minute:Second
.printf"%d-%d-%d %d:%d:%d",@$t16,@$t19,@$t12,@$t13,@$t14,@$t15;
$$ FlagsMask = 0xC000000000000000
$$ KindUtc = 0x4000000000000000;
$$ KindLocal = 0x8000000000000000;
r$t17=poi(${$arg1})&0xC000000000000000;
.if(@$t17==0x4000000000000000){
.printf" (local)";
}
.elsif(@$t17==0x8000000000000000){
.printf" (UTC);
}