Ad-Hoc Debugging Tools

These tools are used for deep investigation, not continuous monitoring. They provide detailed insight but add performance overhead.

• Debugger — Attaches to a running process to inspect variables, memory, and execution flow. Useful for finding logic bugs, but intrusive in production.
• Profiler — Measures where a program spends CPU time or memory. Helps identify performance bottlenecks, but adds overhead.
• System Call Tracing — Monitors OS-level operations like file access and network calls. Useful for low-level troubleshooting, but generates large amounts of data.

These tools are too expensive to run continuously, but they are essential for root-cause analysis when standard monitoring is not enough.