How can I reach STDIN/STDOUT through a gdbserver session - gdb

If I start a normal 'gdb' session, then I can reach STDIN and see STDOUT directly in the terminal:
$ gdb wc
GNU gdb (Gentoo 7.10.1 vanilla) 7.10.1
...
gdb> run
Starting program: /usr/bin/wc
asdf
1 1 5
[Inferior 1 (process 28131) exited normally]
gdb> quit
$
Can I do the same with a gdbserver???
Here is what I have tried (gdbserver):
$ gdbserver /dev/ttyS0 wc
Process wc created; pid = 28156
Listening on port 2345
and client:
$ gdb
GNU gdb (Gentoo 7.10.1 vanilla) 7.10.1
...
gdb> c
Continuing.
Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
0x00007ffff7ddbc40 in _start () from target:/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
gdb>
But, it seems like STDIN/STDOUT is not being connected when using the gdbserver.
How can I run remote debugging over the serial line, and also access STDIN/STDOUT of the application that I'm debugging over the same serial line??

How can I run remote debugging over the serial line, and also access STDIN/STDOUT of the application that I'm debugging over the same serial line??
You'll need to use screen or tmux to multiplex gdb<->gdbserver and keyboard->application traffic over a single serial line.

Related

Remote GDB disconnects whenever I press control + c

I am remote debugging a Stellaris Launchpad. I use OpenOCD to connect to the stellaris and then connect GDB to the server provided by openOCD. I use Open On-Chip Debugger 0.10.0-dev-00002-g79fdeb3 (2015-07-09-23:28). GDB is the one from arm-gcc-none-eabi, the 4_9-2015q1 release.
I invoke openOCD like this:
/usr/local/bin/openocd --file \
/usr/local/share/openocd/scripts/board/ek-lm4f120xl.cfg \
>> openocdLog.txt 2>&1 &
And then GDB like this:
arm-none-eabi-gdb proj//debug/exec -x gdb//gdb.script
gdb/gdb.script contains:
set remotetimeout 10000
target extended-remote :3333
monitor reset halt
load
monitor reset init
The problem is that whenever I hit control+c GDB disconnects. Normally this would halt the remote, but GDB just disconnects:
(gdb) cont
Continuing.
^CError detected on fd 6
Remote communication error. Target disconnected.: Interrupted system call.
(gdb)
OpenOCD has the following things to say, this one while GDB is launching:
Warn : keep_alive() was not invoked in the 1000ms timelimit. GDB alive packet not sent! (1258). Workaround: increase "set remotetimeout" in GDB
Which is weird, considering the gdb/gdb.script file forces remotetimeout to an insanly large number.
And when pressing control+c openOCD says:
Debug: 2602 5089 hla_interface.c:119 hl_interface_quit(): hl_interface_quit
So, how do I resolve this? How can I make GDB halt the remote instead of disconnecting when pressing control+c?
The problem was OpenOCD being too bleeding edge. I had issues with 0.6.1, but version 0.7.0 of OpenOCD works great.

Debugging with gdbserver using serial connection (Not TCP) doesn't work

I'm trying to debug a program on my board which runs an embedded linux and I have Ubuntu as host system. I have a big problem with gdbserver. You see the thing is that my board doesn't have an Ethernet interface but a serial device which I'm using for console and I noticed that you can use a serial device for debugging in gdbserver although I couldn't find an example of this considering everyone that used gdbserver in videos or books used it in TCP mode which I can't do that.
So What I did was simply running gdbserver on the board this way:
root#DM368# gdbserver /dev/ttyS0 hello
Process hello created; pid = 472
On the host side I'm using ddd program and I ran:
root#mosi-VirtualBox:~# ddd --debugger arm-linux-gdb
And in ddd window terminal I entered:
(gdb) cd /root/home/mySimpleHello/hello
(gdb) target remote /dev/ttyUSB0
(gdb) file hello
And /dev/ttyUSB0 is connected to the board's /dev/ttyS0
But I don't get anything back in gdb and there is nothing in gdbserver output which is kind of weird. I mean not a single message like a "host connected" or "remote debugging from ..." or things like that. And in ddd when I ran:
(gdb) b main
Breakpoint 1 at 0x83ac: file hello.c, line 10.
(gdb) run
Then gdb says:
the program in not being run
I tried with gdb on Ubuntu's terminal directly (whitout ddd) and the same thing happened. I even tried with eclipse and I setup a debugging profile in eclipse and I installed gdb-multiarch program and used that in eclipse with its .gdbinit file set to arm. Nothing happens and I have no idea why this simple procedure wouldn't work.
Does somebody have any idea? What am I doing wrong? How can I debug a program using a serial connection?

How to redirect std::cin to a Linux terminal when debugging with GDB?

In Linux, GDB doesn't allow set new-console on and in stead uses something called tty. With
set inferior-tty /dev/pts/[number of an active console],
in a .gdbinit file (requires editing the number every time) it redirects std::cout, but std::cin isn't working properly. It just interprets my input as if I'm sending a bash command and reports an error, and my program continues to wait for input. I can no longer type in the console after that, so I assume std::cin is being redirected, but doesn't work properly.
I tried looking up how to launch a terminal from the application itself. I could only find this answer, which also mentions a bug that it doesn't redirect input.
Is there any way to fix this issue and redirect std::cin (and std::cout) to a Linux terminal properly when debugging?
Background info: What I'm trying to do should be simple. Print a > in front of user input before using std::cin. I have simple code in place that prints the >, flushes cout and then calls getline(). It works when just running the program normally. But sadly, GDB refuses to flush the stream when there isn't a newline, so it doesn't print the >, ignores the first character of the user input and then does prints the >, immediately followed by the error message that my program sends because of the mutilated input string.
In Windows, I've solved it by making a .gdbinit file with set new-console on. This causes GDB to use a Windows console in stead of its own and that works as intended.
If you need to start the debugging after the program has a chance to pause, just run the program in a terminal, and then gdb - your-program-pid in another terminal. Otherwise there's a sequence of steps which is faster to do than to describe.
Start two terminal windows.
In one terminal, figure out the PID of the shell. ps should tell you.
In the other terminal, use these commands
$ gdb - pid-of-the-other-shell
(gdb) br main
(gdb) c
Now you have gdb attached to your shell in another terminal. Not very useful.
In the first terminal, type at the shell prompt
$ exec your-program
Now you have one terminal running gdb and another terminal running your program under gdb, stopped at main. Bear in mind that when the program exits, its terminal window will close. If you don't want this, start a second level shell in the first terminal and attach gdb to it.
You can also use set inferior-tty command, but you must make sure the other tty exists and no other program attempts to read from it. The easiest way is to run a shell in another terminal and give it a while true; do sleep 1000; done command. Note that you may get warning: GDB: Failed to set controlling terminal: Operation not permitted messages. They are harmless.
You can use gdb's multiprocess debugging feature and a terminal emulator like xterm to do this. (gnome-terminal won't work so well as explained later)
prompt.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
enum {
N = 100,
};
char name[N];
printf("> ");
scanf("%s", name);
printf("Hi, %s\n", name);
return 0;
}
xterm.gdb
set detach-on-fork off
set target-async on
set pagination off
set non-stop on
file /usr/bin/xterm
# -ut tells xterm not to write a utmp log record
# which involves root privileges
set args -ut -e ./prompt
catch exec
run
Sample Session
$ gdb -q -x xterm.gdb
Catchpoint 1 (exec)
<...>
[New process 7073]
<...>
Thread 0x7ffff7fb2780 (LWP 7073) is executing new program: /home/scottt/Dropbox/stackoverflow/gdb-stdin-new-terminal/prompt
Reading symbols from /home/scottt/Dropbox/stackoverflow/gdb-stdin-new-terminal/prompt...done.
Catchpoint 1 (exec'd /home/scottt/Dropbox/stackoverflow/gdb-stdin-new-terminal/prompt), 0x0000003d832011f0 in _start () from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
(gdb) inferior 2
[Switching to inferior 2 [process 7073] (/home/scottt/Dropbox/stackoverflow/gdb-stdin-new-terminal/prompt)]
[Switching to thread 2 (Thread 0x7ffff7fb2780 (LWP 7073))]
#0 0x0000003d832011f0 in _start () from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
(gdb) break prompt.c:11
Breakpoint 2 at 0x4004b4: file prompt.c, line 11.
(gdb) continue &
Continuing.
(gdb)
Breakpoint 2, main () at prompt.c:11
11 printf("> ");
next
12 scanf("%s", name);
(gdb) next
13 printf("Hi, %s\n", name);
A new xterm window will appear after executing gdb -q -x xterm.gdb and you can interact with prompt inside it without interfering with GDB.
Related GDB commands:
inferior 2 switches the process GDB's debugging much like the thread command switches threads. (GDB: Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs)
continue & means to continue executing in the background. (GDB: Background Execution)
I used xterm because gnome-terminal uses dbus-launch to ask another process to launch the new terminal outside of the parent-child process relationship that GDB relies on.

Supply arguments to program under gdbserver on MSYS

I needed to debug a program asynchronously, because it stalled, and Ctrl+C killed gdb, rather than interrupting the program (this is on MinGW/MSYS).
Someone hinted that gdb wouldn't work on Windows in async mode, and indeed it didn't (with the Asynchronous execution not supported on this target. message), but that gdbserver would.
So I try:
$ gdbserver localhost:60000 ./a_.exe 0
Process ./a_.exe created; pid = 53644
Listening on port 60000
(Supplying the 0 as the argument, according to how the manpage says it's done.)
Then in another terminal:
$ gdb ./a_.exe
(gdb) target remote localhost:60000
Remote debugging using localhost:60000
0x76fa878f in ntdll!DbgBreakPoint () from C:\Windows\system32\ntdll.dll
(gdb) continue
Continuing.
[Inferior 1 (Remote target) exited with code 01]
While the original now looks like:
$ gdbserver localhost:60000 ./a_.exe 0
Process ./a_.exe created; pid = 53484
Listening on port 60000
Remote debugging from host 127.0.0.1
Expecting 1 argument: test case number to run.
Child exited with status 1
GDBserver exiting
That is, my program thought that it got no arguments.
Is the manpage wrong?
Yes! "Misleading" is a more fitting term. (Misleading, at least as it applies to this version of gdbserver on this platform.)
The first argument is literally the first argument (argv) given to the inferior. Normally this is the name of the executable. So, the following worked:
$ gdbserver localhost:60000 ./a_.exe whatever 0
That is, the manpage should have said, to be consistent:
target> gdbserver host:2345 emacs emacs foo.txt
I am not able to help you out with gdbserver,
but if you are just looking for a way to interrupt a program running in mingw/msys gdb(Similar to Ctrl+C on linux)
take a look at at Debugbreak

Run process with gdb and detach it

Is it possible to run a process with gdb, modify some memory and then detach from the process afterwards?
I can't start the process from outside of gdb as I need to modify the memory, before the first instruction is executed.
When you detach from a process started with gdb, gdb will hang, but killing gdb from another process makes the debugged process still running.
I currently use the following script to launch the process:
echo '# custom gdb function that finds the entry_point an assigns it to $entry_point_address
entry_point
b *$entry_point_address
run
set *((char *)0x100004147) = 0xEB
set *((char *)0x100004148) = 0xE2
detach # gdb hangs here
quit # quit never gets executed
' | gdb -quiet "$file"
This happens in both of my gdb versions:
GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1824)
GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1822 + reverse.put.as patches v0.4)
I'm pretty sure that you can't detach from an inferior processes that was started directly under gdb, however, something like the following might work for you, this is based on a recent gdb, I don't know how much of this will work on version 6.3.
Create a small shell script, like this:
#! /bin/sh
echo $$
sleep 10
exec /path/to/your/program arg1 arg2 arg3
Now start this up, spot the pid from echo $$, and attach to the shell script like this gdb -p PID. Once attached you can:
(gdb) set follow-fork-mode child
(gdb) catch exec
(gdb) continue
Continuing.
[New process NEW-PID]
process NEW-PID is executing new program: /path/to/your/program
[Switching to process NEW-PID]
Catchpoint 1 (exec'd /path/to/your/program), 0x00007f40d8e9fc80 in _start ()
(gdb)
You can now modify the child process as required. Once you're finished just do:
(gdb) detach
And /path/to/your/program should resume (or start in this case) running.