title: “Document for Debugging Kernel-Level Interactions” layout: page hide: true —-

Design Document for Debugging Kernel-Level Interactions

1. Title and Overview

Project Name: Kernel-Level Debugging for macOS Applications Objective: Debug applications interacting with macOS kernel features using tools like dtruss and Instruments.

1. Goals and Non-Goals

Goals: • Debug kernel interactions such as file I/O and memory management. • Optimize system call usage.

Non-Goals: • Modifying kernel code or developing kernel extensions.

1. Design Overview • Input: Application binary. • Output: Debug logs and optimized application. • Architecture: • Tracing: Use dtruss to trace system calls. • Profiling: Analyze kernel-level performance issues.

2. System Design
   1. Set Up Debug Tools: • Configure dtruss and Instruments for kernel tracing.
   2. Run Application: • Trace system calls during execution.
   3. Analyze Logs: • Identify bottlenecks and optimize code.
3. Testing Strategy • Compare application performance before and after optimizations. • Validate system call correctness.