Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 19 Aug 1999 21:48:00 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Zhihui Zhang <zzhang@cs.binghamton.edu>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Kernel debugging questions
Message-ID:  <Pine.GSO.3.96.990819213328.29326A-100000@sol.cs.binghamton.edu>
In-Reply-To: <19990820093530.G14964@freebie.lemis.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Greg Lehey wrote:

> You can't control the execution of the kernel, you can just look at
> the way things are.  With the core dump, you at least have the
> advantage that things won't change while you look at them; you can't
> even do that with /dev/mem.  The other alternative is remote serial
> debugging, where you *can* influence the execution of the kernel, for
> example by setting breakpoints.  But remember that the kernel is
> already running when you attach to it, so you don't say 'run', you say
> 'c[ontinue]'.

Thanks for your response.  I can not think of those points myself. 
However, on page 7 of the book "Panic! Unix system crash dump analysis",
it says that a debugger named kadb in SunOS can load the real kernel
during boot and treat the latter like a great, big, user program, stepping
through its execution, examining and modifying values on the fly. 

It seems to me that FreeBSD does not have such a debugger. Maybe ddb can
do so, but it works with assembly. 

-Zhihui



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.GSO.3.96.990819213328.29326A-100000>