A Debugging Environment for PVM

The PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is one of the most popular implementations of distributed systems. In this report, we present a debugging environment for programming in PVM. The features that the environment provides include running the PVM tasks under the control of debuggers, a run-time log of all the PVM calls made by the tasks, facilities for debugging tasks as groups, and an improved interface to the PVM Console. The important feature of the debugging environment is that it is entirely run-time. Also, the environment can be attached to or detached from the PVM system at any time of the execution of applications. It is user-friendly, with a graphic user-interface and simplified window management. The environment has been implemented and tested on different architectures. The software, which consists of a "Monitor" program, and a set of modifications to the PVM software system, is available from the author on request.