select subset of debug info files in gdb session - debugging

On my fedora box I have installed a lot of separate debug infos.
sudo dnf debuginfo-install <list of packets>
Now, if I debug some simple code it needs very long until some symbol is displayed or some values are printed. It is quite clear that is absolutly needed to evaluate all the installed symbol files to get all information.
But if I have a problem, say on a lib like goocanvas I only want to have my local debug smbols generated with my own compiled code with -g option and the only the debug infos for goocanvas libs.
How can that kind of selection be achieved? Only by renaming the folder of debug info files and generate a copy of needed ones? Maybe as a symlink? Or is there a common selection option anywhere?

You can skip all debug info from shared libraries and only load goocanvas lib symbols. Here is a sample of how to do it in gdb session:
[ ~]$ gdb -q /your/binary
(gdb) set auto-solib-add off
(gdb) start
Temporary breakpoint 1, 0x000055555564edd0 in main ()
(gdb) sharedlibrary goocanvas
From gdb doc:
If your program uses lots of shared libraries with debug info that
takes large amounts of memory, you can decrease the gdb memory
footprint by preventing it from automatically loading the symbols from
shared libraries. To that end, type set auto-solib-add off before
running the inferior, then load each library whose debug symbols you
do need with sharedlibrary regexp, where regexp is a regular
expression that matches the libraries whose symbols you want to be
loaded.
See also this related question: How to prevent GDB from loading debugging symbol for a (large) library?

Related

ELF's gnu_debuglink section gives me weird name

I've used Ubuntu 20.04.3, and when I run
readelf --string-dump=.gnu_debuglink /usr/bin/cp
I got weird debug filename while expecting something like cp.debug
String dump of section '.gnu_debuglink':
[ 0] 674b3a5e9ca27e34cf3517aa997ba91ce6e0a0.debug
[ 31] k`-
This is the original Ubuntu image, no modification at all.
Is there any reason for this?
I got weird debug filename while expecting something like cp.debug
There is nothing weird about this name.
There are two common schemes for associating the program and debug info for that program -- name of the program, or its linker build-id.
You can find linker build-id with readelf -n /usr/bin/cp. Here is the output on my system:
Displaying notes found in: .note.gnu.build-id
Owner Data size Description
GNU 0x00000014 NT_GNU_BUILD_ID (unique build ID bitstring) Build ID: 2f6b630344b1b72875f756dce05a40186d18c6d8
Displaying notes found in: .note.ABI-tag
Owner Data size Description
GNU 0x00000010 NT_GNU_ABI_TAG (ABI version tag) OS: Linux, ABI: 3.2.0
Chances are, the linker build-id for your version of cp is 674b3a5e9ca27e34cf3517aa997ba91ce6e0a0.
Using linker build-id is especially convenient for programs which can appear under several different names (where using just the program name you would have to create several copies (or links) of the debug info).
Also, if the program is updated, its linker build-id will change, and so there is no chance that the "stale" debug info would be loaded by the debugger.

Remote kernel debug on ARMv7 using Olimex ARM-USB-OCD adapter

I'm currently trying to debug my kernel. My goal is to put a breakpoint in a new syscall that I am implementing. The kernel runs on a remote Imx6q board. I've setup the JTAG debugger and I can connect GDB to it and pause the execution.
My issue is whith debug symbols.
I've added those properties to my defconfig :
CONFIG_GDB_SCRIPTS=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL=y
CONFIG_RANDOMIZE_BASE=n
CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER=y
CONFIG_KGDB=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=y
When I start a session :
(gdb) tar ext :3333
Remote debugging using :3333
warning: No executable has been specified and target does not support
determining executable automatically. Try using the "file" command.
0xa7780ef0 in ?? ()
(gdb) c
Continuing.
I can attach a symbol file by hand, but it is required to provide an address to attach it.
(gdb) add-symbol-file /home/tlavocat/development/android/out/target/product/wandboard_qca/kernel-imx/kernel/sys.o
The address where /home/tlavocat/development/android/out/target/product/wandboard_qca/kernel-imx/kernel/sys.o has been loaded is missing
The function I want to stop in is this one :
wandboard_qca:/ # cat /proc/kallsyms | grep sys_keeper_get_state
c003e0ac T sys_keeper_get_state
And it is implemented in kernel/sys.c.
My question is, how can I attach my symbols correctly to the right address ?
Thank's for your answers
I simply needed to load le kernel binary.
file .out/target/product/wandboard_qca/kernel-imx/vmlinux
And then connect to the remote target.

Is there a way to get debugging symbols for CGO code linked into Go?

I have some Cgo code that I'm linking into my Go binary. I've got Cgo running and building my code and wrapper. After some recent changes, I started getting a double-free in my C++ that I'm linking in. I've tried running my binary under lldb and it does trap the malloc panic, but the symbols are not especially useful.
In vanilla C or C++ I've used -g3 to get rich debugging symbols that includes variable names and source. This makes using lldb much more productive. However, I'm having some issues getting these symbols to show up in my go binary. I've noticed that in the backtrace my function appears as main'foo, where foo is the name of my function. There is no other debug info present though, all I get is a trace of assembly and memory pointers/registers.
I've tried invoking go build with CGO_CFLAGS="-g3" CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g3" but the binary still doesn't have the symbols. I've also tried adding -g3 to the CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS in my .go file where I set other flags (before import "C") but this doesn't seem to work either. I can't think of any other way to get this debugging info added into my binary - is there some Go-specific flag or build sequence that enables this?
I don't know how the process of go & C++ linking works. But a brief description of how debug information is handled on OS X might help you figure out where the debug information is being lost.
On OS X as on most systems, the debug information for an individual source file compile goes into the .o file made from it. You can verify that your .o file got debug information in a variety of ways, here's one:
lldb -o "image dump sections" Target.o --batch | grep DWARF
0x00000300 container [0x0000000000061538-0x0000000000782c77) rwx 0x00061cb8 0x0072173f 0x00000000 Target.o.__DWARF
0x00000009 dwarf-str [0x0000000000061538-0x00000000004eeabc) rwx 0x00061cb8 0x0048d584 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__debug_str
0x0000000a dwarf-loc [0x00000000004eeabc-0x00000000004ef493) rwx 0x004ef23c 0x000009d7 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__debug_loc
0x0000000b dwarf-abbrev [0x00000000004ef493-0x00000000004f09a7) rwx 0x004efc13 0x00001514 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__debug_abbrev
0x0000000c dwarf-info [0x00000000004f09a7-0x00000000006ea7f1) rwx 0x004f1127 0x001f9e4a 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__debug_info
0x0000000d dwarf-ranges [0x00000000006ea7f1-0x00000000006ec481) rwx 0x006eaf71 0x00001c90 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__debug_ranges
0x0000000e dwarf-macinfo [0x00000000006ec481-0x00000000006ec482) rwx 0x006ecc01 0x00000001 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__debug_macinfo
0x0000000f apple-names [0x00000000006ec482-0x000000000071134e) rwx 0x006ecc02 0x00024ecc 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__apple_names
0x00000010 apple-objc [0x000000000071134e-0x0000000000711372) rwx 0x00711ace 0x00000024 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__apple_objc
0x00000011 apple-namespaces [0x0000000000711372-0x00000000007116d6) rwx 0x00711af2 0x00000364 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__apple_namespac
0x00000012 apple-types [0x00000000007116d6-0x0000000000748797) rwx 0x00711e56 0x000370c1 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__apple_types
0x00000015 dwarf-line [0x000000000075d348-0x0000000000782c77) rwx 0x0075dac8 0x0002592f 0x02000000 Target.o.__DWARF.__debug_line
If you don't see anything here, then the compiler isn't emitting debug information...
The next step is specific to Darwin, instead of putting the debug information into the output of the link stage, the debug info is left in the .o files, and a "debug map" is inserted into the output image. That's how the debugger finds its way back to the .o files. You can see that by doing:
$ nm -ap <YourBinary> | grep OSO
you should see a list of all your .o files here. If you don't then at some point in the build process your binary is getting stripped (using at least strip -S) You have to find out when that is happening and not do that. Also check that the .o files are still where the entries you see from the command above say they are. It may be some part of the build process is moving them around, and the debugger can't find them anymore.

Undefined info command: "goroutines"

I'm new to golang. I was debugging my go application.
While I tried to run "info goroutines", it threw out:
Undefined info command: "goroutines".
Try "help info
What did I miss in my gdb configuration?
The article "Debugging Go Code with GDB" does mention:
(gdb) info goroutines
But only in the context of loading extension scripts for a given binary.
The tool chain uses this to extend GDB with a handful of commands to inspect internals of the runtime code (such as goroutines) and to pretty print the built-in map, slice and channel types.
If you'd like to see how this works, or want to extend it, take a look at src/pkg/runtime/runtime-gdb.py in the Go source distribution.
It depends on some special magic types (hash<T,U>) and variables (runtime.m and runtime.g) that the linker (src/cmd/ld/dwarf.c) ensures are described in the DWARF code.
If you're interested in what the debugging information looks like, run 'objdump -W 6.out' and browse through the .debug_* sections.
So make sure your debug session is run with those extensions activated.
in the gdb session run
source $GOROOT/src/runtime/runtime-gdb.py
where $GOROOT is go lives (see go env | grep ROOT)
you should use https://github.com/go-delve/delve as recommended by golang docs https://golang.org/doc/gdb

How to 'reload' source files in GDB

Is there a command in gdb that I can use to (re)load / "refresh" source files? (As far as I can see, gdb works only with source directories, according to Debugging with GDB: Source - and there is no specific command to "refresh")
Background about my problem:
I use a virtual machine with a debug kernel, so I can connect to a local instance of gdb, and can debug kernel modules. The modules are compiled with debug info on, and this specifies folders where the source of the modules is kept (Instruct GDB 6.5 to use source embedded in object file - Stack Overflow). I have the source directories in the same path(s) in both VM and local machine.
The problem is this - I need to do quite a bit of steps in order to get the module to segfault - and the remote gdb to go into the stack. Then I do a backtrace, and I can see the source files referenced, i.e.
#0 0xc0132a13 in ?? ()
#1 0xc056e551 in ?? ()
#2 0xc056e506 in ?? ()
#3 0xd8be53f3 in mymodule_func1 (var1=0xd79f9b44, var2=0x0, var3=825269148)
at /media/src/mymodule.h:954
#4 0xd8be53d0 in mymodule_func2 (data=3617561412)
at /media/src/mymodule.h:936
#5 0xc014fe87 in ?? ()
#6 0xc0151478 in ?? ()
Then I try to do say, list /media/src/mymodule.h:954 - and I realize that I have changed stuff on the local version of mymodule.h file!!
So I undo the changes - but unfortunately, GDB does not see these changes! And, of course, I don't want to restart GDB - because that means I have to restart the VM, and go through the entire procedure in order to get the kernel module to segfault again :( !!
Then I try to do something like this:
(gdb) show symbol-reloading
Dynamic symbol table reloading multiple times in one run is off.
(gdb) set symbol-reloading on
(gdb) add-symbol-file ~/mymodule.o 0xd8be4000
add symbol table from file "/media/src/mymodule.o" at
.text_addr = 0xd8be4000
(y or n) y
Reading symbols from /media/src/mymodule.o...done.
... in hope that it will somehow "reload" the source files - but unfortunately, list /media/src/mymodule.h:954 shows that it doesn't, nothing is changed - even though gdb does recognize that something has changed, as in warning: Source file is more recent than executable.... (so, for the time being, I have to restart entire VM and gdb as well :( :( )
Resetting the directory list using the directory command appears to have the desired effect.
From https://www.cs.rochester.edu/~nelson/courses/csc_173/review/gdb.html:
After changing program, reload executable with file command
(gdb) file gdbprog
A program is being debugged already. Kill it? (y or n) y
Load new symbol table from "gdbprog"? (y or n) y
Reading symbols from gdbprog...
done.
Breakpoint 1 at 0x2298: file gdbprog.cc, line 10.
(gdb) run
Starting program: gdbprog
Breakpoint 1, InitArrays (array=0x18be8)
at gdbprog.cc:10
10 for(i = 0;i < 10;i++)
This warning means source files from which binary was made are updated with new changes.
To remove this warning just rebuild the binary you are debugging with new and modified files.

Resources