vdso handling

["Metzger, Markus T" <markus dot t dot metzger at intel dot com>]

Hello,

My name is Markus.  I work for Intel on GDB in the area of
hardware-supported execution recording.

I noticed that the BFD created for the VDSO (system-provided in-memory
DSO) does not contain any BFD sections.  Is this intentional?  Or has
there just been no need for them?

If it just hasn't been done, yet, how would I best approach this?


Here's the problem I am trying to solve with this.  May as well be
that I'm on the wrong track...

When using the btrace record target, GDB only allows access to
read-only memory during replay.  The btrace record target does not
trace data so read-write memory corresponds to the end of the trace,
not the current replay position.

The implementation uses the same check that is also used for
'trust-readonly-sections", i.e.

	    section = target_section_by_addr (ops, offset);
	    if (section != NULL)
	      {
		/* Check if the section we found is readonly.  */
		if ((bfd_get_section_flags (section->the_bfd_section->owner,
					    section->the_bfd_section)
		     & SEC_READONLY) != 0)

For the vdso, there is no target section, so the check fails.  This
prevents GDB from disassembling vdso instructions during replay.


The vdso is processed in symbol_file_add_from_memory at
gdb/symfile-mem.c:84.  It calls bfd_from_remote_memory to create a BFD
for the vdso and then processes it.  If there were BFD sections, the
following small patch should add the respective target sections to GDB.

diff --git a/gdb/symfile-mem.c b/gdb/symfile-mem.c
index e3230de..cf4da38 100644
--- a/gdb/symfile-mem.c
+++ b/gdb/symfile-mem.c
@@ -91,6 +91,7 @@ symbol_file_add_from_memory (struct bfd *templ, CORE_ADDR addr, char *name,
   struct section_addr_info *sai;
   unsigned int i;
   struct cleanup *cleanup;
+  struct target_section *sections, *sections_end, *tsec;

   if (bfd_get_flavour (templ) != bfd_target_elf_flavour)
     error (_("add-symbol-file-from-memory not supported for this target"));
@@ -113,6 +114,22 @@ symbol_file_add_from_memory (struct bfd *templ, CORE_ADDR addr, char *name,
     error (_("Got object file from memory but can't read symbols: %s."),
	   bfd_errmsg (bfd_get_error ()));

+  /* Add target sections for this bfd.  */
+  sections = NULL;
+  sections_end = NULL;
+  if (build_section_table (nbfd, &sections, &sections_end))
+    error (_("Failed to build section table"));
+
+  /* Adjust the target section addresses by the load address.  */
+  for (tsec = sections; tsec != sections_end; ++tsec)
+    {
+      tsec->addr += loadbase;
+      tsec->endaddr += loadbase;
+    }
+
+  add_target_sections (&nbfd, sections, sections_end);
+  xfree (sections);
+
   sai = alloc_section_addr_info (bfd_count_sections (nbfd));
   make_cleanup (xfree, sai);
   i = 0;


This should allow me to pass the above read-only section check and
allow GDB to disassemble vdso instructions.

thanks,
markus.


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