Auto Bug Capture

Some embodiments of the invention provide a novel architecture for debugging devices. This architecture includes numerous devices that without user intervention automatically detect and report bug events to a set of servers that aggregate and process the bug events. When a device detects a potential bug event, the device in some embodiments generates a description of the potential bug event, and sends the generated description to the server set through a network. In addition to generating such a description, the device in some embodiments directs one or more of its modules to gather and store a collection of one or more data sets that are relevant to the potential bug event, in case the event has to be further analyzed by the server set. In the discussion below, the generated bug-event description is referred to as the event signature, while the gathered collection of data sets for an event is referred to as the event's data archive. The server set aggregates and processes the bug-event signatures that it receives from the various devices. For only a subset of the reported bug-event signatures, the server set then directs the devices that sent these signatures to also send the data archives that these devices have gathered and stored for the events associated with these signatures. These data archives can be further analyzed to identify the root causes of the bug events.