WinDbg and Virtualbox and machine snapshot - force kernel debug reconnect

Question

So one of the nice features of virtualbox is to have snapshots that you can restore later on.

However, when doing kernel debugging with virtualbox and windbg, a debugging session is not restored upon restoring the snapshot.

Is there any way to force windbg and the guest machine to re-sync and restart that kernel debugging session upon restoring a machine snapshot instead of having to restart the machine each time?

Tini

I'd have thought this was just a matter of telling Windbg to reconnect. What goes wrong? – Flavour

There is no 'reconnect' option. – Tini

What happens if you just restart WinDbg? – Flavour

It's not built to do that - you go to the kernel debug settings and click "connect" and it hangs. – Tini

Do you mean there was a debug session open at the time the snapshot was taken? – Flavour

Does virtualbox allow you to snapshot multiple VMs simultaneously? If so, you could run your debugger in a VM and snapshot it alongside the target VM. – Flavour

Well the problem with that is that the network session would be broken each time I would think. I'll give it a try. – Tini

Have you tried disconnecting the WinDbg session, taking the snapshot, then reconnecting? – Curacy

The problem is that WinDbg connects on the VM startup. The OS doesn't think to or care to reconnect anytime during normal running. – Tini

Answer 1

This tool streamlines you deploy , debug , refactor cycle By half once you have it setup and working. Debug sessions are faster too as a bonus -

http://virtualkd.sysprogs.org/

Support virtual box out of the box as well. Absolute must have.

Vicious

This has nothing to do with restoring VM snapshots. – Tini

If you try it out you will see that you won't really have to bother about resyncing the debug sessions anymore the tool will do it for you. You would need to install virtkd on the base snapshot. – Vicious

I actually almost posted this an an answer before realising it had been -1'd here. This is the answer, you crank up with the included Vm monitor tool and if you need to restart WinDbg you just it from there and it works the majority of the time. +1'd. – Zone