Re: [RFC PATCH 0/6] Support for Linux kernel thread aware debug

[Omair Javaid <omair dot javaid at linaro dot org>]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2019 at 22:52, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> On 2/4/19 1:12 AM, Omair Javaid wrote:
> > On Tue, 29 Jan 2019 at 22:30, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 1/28/19 9:03 PM, Omair Javaid wrote:
> >>> This patch series implements linux kernel target which allows linux kernel
> >>> tasks to be viewed as GDB threads. We have had multiple set of patches
> >>> submitted over last few years aiming to insert add-ons into GDB for debugging
> >>> Linux kernel. This patch series builds on top of Linux kernel infrastructure
> >>> submitted by Philipp Rudo in his various sets of patches aiming to debug
> >>> Linux kernel dumps.
> >>
> >> I just have one minor suggestion / comment about file names.  I maintain
> >> FreeBSD kernel patches for gdb out-of-tree (for various reasons), and those
> >> patches use some similar things (e.g. a different OSABI).  My comment has
> >> to do with the filenames.  Other osabi-specific files tend to use more
> >> verbose names such as 'linux-arm-nat.c'.  I wonder if it makes sense to
> >> spell out linux here as well.  I have been using 'arm-fbsd-kern.c' as a
> >> complement to 'arm-fbsd-tdep.c' for the kernel gdbarch.  The architecture
> >> independent files follow the patter 'fbsd-k*.c' (e.g. fbsd-kld.c for modules
> >> and fbsd-kthr.c for thread enumeration), but I would be happy to move those
> >> to something like 'fbsd-kern-ld.c' and 'fbsd-kern-thr.c'.  For your current
> >> patchset that might mean something like 'linux-kern-tdep.c' instead of
> >> 'lk-tdep.c'.  I would also be fine with 'arm-linux-kern-tdep.c' instead of
> >> 'arm-linux-kern.c' perhaps if other folks feel like that is more consistent.
> >
> > Hi John,
> >
> > Andreas has aptly described the reason behind choosing the
> > nomenclature of new linux kernel specific files as it is right now and
> > i am open to any suggestion that my come up during reviews.
>
> Ok.  I'm not firmly tied to a specific naming scheme, and I'll defer to
> whatever the global maintainers prefer.
>
> > Also I was wondering if you can share details of kernel debugging
> > features which has implemented in your out of tree FreeBSD patches for
> > GDB. Also share some insight on ways to test this patchset.
>
> So I don't have any formalized testing. :-/  For testing cross-debug of
> crash dumps I modified the libkvm library in FreeBSD's base system to
> support reading the kernel crash dump format of other architectures and
> can then generate a crash dump in a VM / qemu instance and copy it to a
> 64-bit x86 host to examine against a sysroot.  However, most of my testing
> is just by using the kernel target as most of my work is FreeBSD kernel
> and userland stuff, so I exercise it that way.  I do have various gdb scripts
> (still written in the ancient gdb script language from gdb 6.x rather than
> python) at github.com/bsdjhb/kdbg/tree/master/gdb  They aren't generally
> useful on other kernels though and are specific to FreeBSD.
>
> In terms of features, the current FreeBSD patches support most FreeBSD
> architectures (sparc64 is untested and I haven't gotten stack traces on
> ppc to work right, though I think I can reuse what I just did for risc-v
> to fix ppc at some point).  A few years ago I reworked the libkvm library
> in FreeBSD to support cross-debugging of crashdumps, so you can generally
> cross-debug crashdumps on FreeBSD.  Currently this only works on a FreeBSD
> host because I haven't pulled out a portable version of libkvm that could
> be compiled on a non-FreeBSD host yet.  It does support kernel modules by
> reusing the shared library interface.  This is implemented by having a
> custom set of solib_ops that get attached to the kernel-specific gdbarch
> during that OSABI's init handler.  It has some custom commands that are
> wrappers around 'thread N' that let you switch to a thread by process ID
> or kernel thread ID.  The main things it requires of each architecture are
> a method for populating a regcache from a kernel thread register state
> ('struct pcb' on FreeBSD), and custom frame unwinders to walk across
> exception frames on the stack.  Currently these are marked as signal frames
> so that GDB will unwind across them ok when you have a page fault in the
> kernel due to a NULL function pointer (other frame unwinders stop unwinding
> when they see a NULL pc, but signal frames can keep unwinding past those).
>
> I gave a talk a couple of years ago at a BSD conference about GDB that
> includes some kgdb slides.  You can see the slides at
> https://people.freebsd.org/~jhb/papers/bsdcan/2016/slides.pdf if that is
> helpful.

Thanks John. This is helpful.

>
> --
> John Baldwin
>
>