symbolicate-crash-dump

Symbolicate a Crash Dump

Turn a native VS Code crash dump (.dmp) into a readable backtrace with method names using electron-minidump.

VS Code team members only. Symbol files for internal Electron, Insiders, and Stable builds live in a private-adjacent release repo. A macOS or Linux device is required — electron-minidump does not run on Windows.

Prerequisites

• A crash dump file (*.dmp). See Creating a crash report below if you don't have one yet.
• A global install of electron-minidump:

  npm install -g electron-minidump
  

• For Insiders/Stable symbols, an authenticated GitHub CLI (gh auth status) with access to the private microsoft/vscode-electron-prebuilt repo.

Procedure

1. Run an initial symbolication pass

This generates or refreshes the electron-minidump cache and tells you which symbols are still missing.

electron-minidump crash-file.dmp > symbolicated-output.log

Inspect symbolicated-output.log. Look at the top frames of the backtrace: if a frame names a module (e.g. Electron Framework) but has no method name after it, symbols for that module are required.

Retry on transient download errors. electron-minidump downloads symbols from public symbol servers, so a run can fail on a transient network error (e.g. failed to download ... (code 56) or (code 28)). Successfully downloaded symbols are cached, so simply re-running the same command resumes where it left off. Retrying a few times is expected:

for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do
    electron-minidump crash-file.dmp > symbolicated-output.log && break
    sleep 3
done

2. Get the appropriate symbol files

Match the symbol source to the build that produced the crash:

microsoft/vscode-electron-prebuilt is a private repo — this is why the flow is team-members-only. A plain browser or curl link will 404 without auth; download the asset with an authenticated GitHub CLI instead (gh auth status should show you logged in):

# List releases (tagged by Electron version) to find the right tag:
gh release list --repo microsoft/vscode-electron-prebuilt

# Download just the symbol zip you need:
gh release download v42.5.0-14525058 \
    --repo microsoft/vscode-electron-prebuilt \
    --pattern "stable-symbols-v42.5.0-win32-x64.zip"

The releases are tagged by Electron version, not VS Code version, so first find the Electron version the crashed VS Code build shipped. It's the target= in that version's .npmrc (e.g. git show 1.128.0:.npmrc), which mirrors the electron devDependency in package.json. Then pick the matching symbol zip by quality, platform, and architecture — e.g. a Stable Windows x64 crash on Electron 42.5.0 needs stable-symbols-v42.5.0-win32-x64.zip (use insiders-symbols-… for Insiders). Code - OSS symbols come from the public electron/electron releases and can be downloaded without special access.

These zips are small and selective. A *-symbols-*.zip typically contains only a handful of first-party modules — electron.exe.sym, libEGL.dll.sym, libGLESv2.dll.sym on Windows (and the equivalents elsewhere). Many modules that show up in a backtrace — notably runtime.node and any OS/third-party DLL — are not in these zips. runtime.node frames often cannot be symbolicated at all from public symbols; when the crash is in a third-party module, attribute it by module name rather than expecting method names on every frame (see Reading the result).

3. Copy the .sym files into the electron-minidump cache

The cache lives at:

"$(npm root -g)/electron-minidump/cache/breakpad_symbols"

Breakpad keys symbols by <module>.pdb/<debug-id>/<module>.sym, and the <debug-id> must match exactly between the dump and the symbol zip — a same-version zip built from a different pipeline run will have a different id and won't be used. After the initial pass, the cache already contains an (empty) directory for each required module whose name and hash you must match:

CACHE="$(npm root -g)/electron-minidump/cache/breakpad_symbols"
# The debug-id electron-minidump wants for a given module:
ls "$CACHE/electron.exe.pdb"     # e.g. DD081533CD7E33A44C4C44205044422E1

Unzip the downloaded symbols and confirm the same module/hash exists in the zip before copying it in. The zip's internal layout is also <module>.pdb/<debug-id>/<module>.sym.

Example (Windows: the shipped main binary is Code.exe, but its symbols come from electron.exe.sym):

# Unzip somewhere, e.g. ~/stable-symbols/
unzip stable-symbols-v42.5.0-win32-x64.zip -d ~/stable-symbols

# Only copy if the debug-id matches what the cache expects.
# Keep the tilde outside quotes so it expands to your home directory:
HASH=DD081533CD7E33A44C4C44205044422E1
cp ~/stable-symbols/symbols/electron.exe.pdb/"$HASH"/electron.exe.sym \
   "$CACHE/electron.exe.pdb/$HASH/"

On macOS the analogous module is Electron Framework (Electron Framework/<hash>/Electron Framework.sym). Repeat for any other module the initial pass reported as missing method names — but only when the zip actually contains a matching-hash .sym for it.

If no matching-hash symbols exist, you cannot get method names for that module — this is common for officially-shipped Stable/Insiders builds whose exact electron.exe/Code.exe hash isn't in any public prebuilt zip, and for runtime.node. Fall back to attributing the crash by module and process (see Reading the result); that is usually enough to identify a third-party culprit.

4. Re-run symbolication

electron-minidump crash-file.dmp > symbolicated-output.log

The backtrace in symbolicated-output.log should now have method names attached. If some frames are still bare, return to step 2 for the module(s) still missing symbols.

Reading the result

Once you have a symbolicated backtrace, turn it into a root cause by answering two questions:

Which module owns the crash?

Look at the top frame of the crashing thread (marked (crashed)) and its module name:

• If it's a VS Code / Electron module — Code.exe, runtime.node, Electron Framework, libnode, libffmpeg, V8 frames — the fault is likely inside the product or Electron.
• If it's a third-party / OS module — an antivirus, VPN, proxy, or shell-extension DLL injected into the process — the crash is almost certainly caused by that software, not VS Code. Injected DLLs often appear interleaved with runtime.node/V8 frames because they hook the runtime.

Find where the module is loaded on disk to confirm it's third-party. On Windows the strings of the dump usually reveal the full path, e.g. a DLL under C:\WINDOWS\system32\ or a vendor folder rather than the VS Code install directory:

strings -a crash-file.dmp | grep -i "<SuspectModule>" | sort -u

Which process crashed?

The process type tells you whether this is the main process, a renderer/window, or the extension host. On modern Electron the extension host runs inside a Node utility process, so a crash there shows up as the node.mojom.NodeService utility — not a process literally named "extension host":

strings -a crash-file.dmp | grep -oiE "utility-sub-type=[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+|node\.mojom\.[A-Za-z]+|--type=[a-z-]+" | sort -u

Match this against the reported symptom (e.g. an "extension host crash-loop" should correspond to a NodeService utility crash).

When you have multiple dumps, symbolicate each and compare the crash reason and top frame — an identical signature across dumps confirms a single, reproducible cause.

Creating a crash report

If you don't yet have a .dmp file, produce one with the --crash-reporter-directory option:

1. Close all instances of VS Code.
2. Run code --crash-reporter-directory <absolute-path> from the command line (use code-insiders for the Insiders build).
3. Take the steps that lead to the crash.
4. Look for a *.dmp file in that folder.

You can only symbolicate crashes from a build you have matching symbols for. Crashes from Insiders/Stable need the internal Electron symbols; crashes from a local source build (Code - OSS) need the OSS Electron symbols.

Remote Extension Host crashes (Linux, gdb)

Native crashes in a remote server's extension host use core dumps and gdb instead of electron-minidump:

1. Before running the server, allow core dumps: ulimit -c unlimited.
2. Reproduce the crash. Retrieve the core dump via coredumpctl, or from the path in /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern.
3. Load it in gdb and capture output:

   gdb -se <path-to-vscode-server>/node -c <path-to-core-file>
   

   Then run and collect the output of:

   set pagination off
   info sharedlibrary
   info registers
   bt full
   disassemble
   

Tips

• Keep crash-file.dmp and symbolicated-output.log out of the repo — they are throwaway artifacts.
• The cache path is dynamic; always resolve it with $(npm root -g) rather than hardcoding a home directory.
• Breakpad matches symbols by exact debug-id, not by version name. If method names are still missing after adding symbols, confirm the .sym you copied has the exact hash the cache directory expects, and double-check the quality (stable/insiders), platform (win32/darwin/linux), and arch (x64/arm64) of the symbol zip.
• Not every frame can be symbolicated. runtime.node and third-party/OS modules frequently have no public symbols; identifying the crashing module and process is usually enough to reach a root cause.