I am trying to start the kernel in QEMU using GDB for remote debugging, but I cannot execute or set breakpoints. Here's the gdb session:
linux (master *) $ gdb vmlinux
GNU gdb (Debian 7.12-6) 7.12.0.20161007-git
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
[LICENSE TEXT]
The target architecture is assumed to be i386:x86-64
Reading symbols from vmlinux...done.
(gdb) target remote localhost:1234
localhost:1234: Connection timed out.
(gdb) target remote localhost:1234
Remote debugging using localhost:1234
0xffffffffa13507ee in ?? ()
(gdb) c
Continuing.
^C
Thread 1 received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
0xffffffffa13507ee in ?? ()
(gdb) b rcu_process_callbacks
Breakpoint 1 at 0xffffffff81101800: file kernel/rcu/tree.c, line 3037.
(gdb) c
Continuing.
Warning:
Cannot insert breakpoint 1.
Cannot access memory at address 0xffffffff81101800
Command aborted.
(gdb)
I compiled a kernel with debugging symbols, as indicated in the kernel documentation:
linux (master *) $ grep CONFIG_DEBUG .config | grep -v "^#"
CONFIG_DEBUG_DEVRES=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_FS=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_STACK_USAGE=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_MEMORY_INIT=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_STACKOVERFLOW=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_BUGVERBOSE=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_BOOT_PARAMS=y
I also checked if there are debugging symbols in the assembly core.
linux (master *) $ nm --debug-syms vmlinux | grep "\.debug"
0000000000000000 N .debug_abbrev
0000000000000000 N .debug_aranges
0000000000000000 N .debug_frame
0000000000000000 N .debug_info
0000000000000000 N .debug_line
0000000000000000 N .debug_loc
0000000000000000 N .debug_ranges
0000000000000000 N .debug_str
I run QEMU with the following command line:
linux (master *) $ qemu-system-x86_64 -smp 4 -cpu host \
-m 2048 -kernel arch/x86/boot/bzImage \
-initrd ../obj/initramfs-busybox-x86.cpio.gz -nographic \
-append "console=ttyS0" -enable-kvm \
-drive file=../disk.img,if=virtio,cache=none -s
What am I missing that could cause GDB to crash? I also can’t execute GDB extension commands from GDB kernel scripts, so I guess GDB should do this without realizing that it is debugging the kernel? Do I need to enable KGDB for this?
I am using the Linux kernel 4.12-rc5.
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