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When debugging an EPiServer Web site, not all stack information will be present without symbol files, such as line numbers. This article provides a description of how to debug an EPiServer CMS 5 R2 Web site utilizing the EPiServer symbol server.
›› Introduction
›› EPiServer symbol server
›› Environment variables
›› Debug in Visual Studio 2008
When debugging an EPiServer Web site, not all stack information will be present without symbol files, such as line numbers. It can be important to get as much information as possible when an exception has been thrown from an EPiServer binary, therefore the symbols (pdb:s) should be used for debugging purposes.
The pdb:s are created together with the binary files, though not shipped with the EPiServer CMS 5 R2 installer. Instead, EPiServer has a symbol server, where the pdb:s can be downloaded and used by a debug tool.
From EPiServer CMS 5 R2 (5.2.375.7) symbols will be uploaded to the symbol server for every release. When debugging an EPiServer site with that version number or higher, it will be possible to automatically download the correct symbols from the EPiServer symbol server. The symbol server URL is: http://symbols.episerver.com.
To be able to automatically get the pdb:s from EPiServers symbol server, a couple of environment variables must be configured. To open windows environment variables, follow these steps:
To download the binary files, the system variable “_NT_EXECUTABLE_IMAGE_PATH” must be set to download binaries from the EPiServer server. If there is already a system variable with that name, it must be changed through the “Edit” button. If no system variable with that name is present in the list, add a new with the “New” button. Set the “variable name” to “_NT_EXECUTABLE_IMAGE_PATH”.
The “variable value” should be set as “SRV*local_cache_path*http://symbols.episerver.com”, for example “SRV*c:\epipdb*http://symbols.episerver.com”.
To download the pdb files, the system variable “_NT_SYMBOL_PATH” must be set to download symbols from the EPiServer server. If there is already a system variable with that name, it must be changed through the “Edit” button. If no system variable with that name is present in the list, add a new with the “New” button. Set the “variable name” to “_NT_SYMBOL_PATH”.
The “variable value” should be set as “SRV*local_cache_path*http://symbols.episerver.com”, for example “SRV*c:\epipdb*http://symbols.episerver.com”.
To debug a site through Visual Studio with the symbols from EPiServer, the symbol server and cache path must be set in the debugging options:
When debugging, open the modules windows in Visual Studio (Debug, Windows, Modules) that is only available when debugging. When an assembly is loaded, it will appear in the modules list, and you can see if it´s symbols have been loaded (Symbol Status). The symbol file should point to somewhere in the directory that has been pointed out before (cache map for symbols).