Re: Problems debugging multithreaded program wirh gdbserver via serial port

[Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org>]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 04:11:32PM +0200, Yoni Rabinovitch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>   I am trying to debug a multithreaded program running on an embedded MIPS 5Kc using gdb and gdbserver, connected via
> a serial port.
> 
>   My environment is as follows:
> 
>   MIPS kernel based on 2.4.18
>   gdb :  6.2.1, configured with --host=i686-pc-linux-gnu --target=mips-hardhat-linux --disable-sim --disable-tcl --enable-threads --enable-shared
>   gdbserver: 6.2.1, configured with --target=mips-linux --enable-threads --enable-shared
>   gcc : 3.2.3,     }
>   binutils : 2.13  }   Built using crosstool
>   glibc: 2.2.5      }
> 
>   My problems are as follows:
> 
> 1)  If I try to run the program from gdbserver (i.e. gdbserver /dev/ttyS0 wlsd), I get "readchar: Input/output error" messages,
> and nothing works. See attached file gdb_fail.
> What is going on here ?

It sounds like your serial port is messed up.

> 2) If I first run the program, and then attach gdbserver to it (i.e. gdbserver /dev/ttyS0 --attach 80), I can debug it. 
> However, debugging is amazingly slow !! 
> For example, it can take 10 minutes for the "backtrace" (bt) command to complete !!! 
> Also, I get messages saying "Cannot access memory at address 0x2c" whnever I try to look at the stack.
> See attached file gdb_trace.
> Why is it going so slow ?
> What is the cause of the "Cannot access memory at address 0x2c"  messages ?

GDB is confused by glibc's syscall stubs.  In general, don't worry
about errors at the end of backtraces.

> 3) If I repeat the scenario described in 2), but with "set debug remote 1", it seems to work somewhat faster
> (e.g. bt takes about 1 minute to complete).
> I am seeing alot of "Packet instead of Ack, ignoring it" messages.
> See attached file gdb_trace_debug.
> What do these messages mean ? 

Try "set debug serial 1" in addition - it's very verbose but maybe it
will tell you what the "packet" is.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz