Debugging390.txt
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-
- Debugging on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
- by
- Denis Joseph Barrow (djbarrow@de.ibm.com,barrow_dj@yahoo.com)
- Copyright (C) 2000-2001 IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH, IBM Corporation
- Best viewed with fixed width fonts
- Overview of Document:
- =====================
- This document is intended to give an good overview of how to debug
- Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture it isn't intended as a complete reference & not a
- tutorial on the fundamentals of C & assembly, it dosen't go into
- 390 IO in any detail. It is intended to compliment the documents in the
- reference section below & any other worthwhile references you get.
- It is intended like the Enterprise Systems Architecture/390 Reference Summary
- to be printed out & used as a quick cheat sheet self help style reference when
- problems occur.
- Contents
- ========
- Register Set
- Address Spaces on Intel Linux
- Address Spaces on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
- The Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture Kernel Task Structure
- Register Usage & Stackframes on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
- A sample program with comments
- Compiling programs for debugging on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
- Figuring out gcc compile errors
- Debugging Tools
- objdump
- strace
- Performance Debugging
- Debugging under VM
- s/390 & z/Architecture IO Overview
- Debugging IO on s/390 & z/Architecture under VM
- GDB on s/390 & z/Architecture
- Stack chaining in gdb by hand
- Examining core dumps
- ldd
- Debugging modules
- The proc file system
- Starting points for debugging scripting languages etc.
- SysRq
- References
- Special Thanks
- Register Set
- ============
- The current architectures have the following registers.
-
- 16 General propose registers, 32 bit on s/390 64 bit on z/Architecture, r0-r15 or gpr0-gpr15 used for arithmetic & addressing.
- 16 Control registers, 32 bit on s/390 64 bit on z/Architecture, ( cr0-cr15 kernel usage only ) used for memory managment,
- interrupt control,debugging control etc.
- 16 Access registers ( ar0-ar15 ) 32 bit on s/390 & z/Architecture
- not used by normal programs but potentially could
- be used as temporary storage. Their main purpose is their 1 to 1
- association with general purpose registers and are used in
- the kernel for copying data between kernel & user address spaces.
- Access register 0 ( & access register 1 on z/Architecture ( needs 64 bit
- pointer ) ) is currently used by the pthread library as a pointer to
- the current running threads private area.
- 16 64 bit floating point registers (fp0-fp15 ) IEEE & HFP floating
- point format compliant on G5 upwards & a Floating point control reg (FPC)
- 4 64 bit registers (fp0,fp2,fp4 & fp6) HFP only on older machines.
- Note:
- Linux (currently) always uses IEEE & emulates G5 IEEE format on older machines,
- ( provided the kernel is configured for this ).
- The PSW is the most important register on the machine it
- is 64 bit on s/390 & 128 bit on z/Architecture & serves the roles of
- a program counter (pc), condition code register,memory space designator.
- In IBM standard notation I am counting bit 0 as the MSB.
- It has several advantages over a normal program counter
- in that you can change address translation & program counter
- in a single instruction. To change address translation,
- e.g. switching address translation off requires that you
- have a logical=physical mapping for the address you are
- currently running at.
- Bit Value
- s/390 z/Architecture
- 0 0 Reserved ( must be 0 ) otherwise specification exception occurs.
- 1 1 Program Event Recording 1 PER enabled,
- PER is used to facilititate debugging e.g. single stepping.
- 2-4 2-4 Reserved ( must be 0 ).
- 5 5 Dynamic address translation 1=DAT on.
- 6 6 Input/Output interrupt Mask
- 7 7 External interrupt Mask used primarily for interprocessor signalling &
- clock interupts.
- 8-11 8-11 PSW Key used for complex memory protection mechanism not used under linux
- 12 12 1 on s/390 0 on z/Architecture
- 13 13 Machine Check Mask 1=enable machine check interrupts
- 14 14 Wait State set this to 1 to stop the processor except for interrupts & give
- time to other LPARS used in CPU idle in the kernel to increase overall
- usage of processor resources.
- 15 15 Problem state ( if set to 1 certain instructions are disabled )
- all linux user programs run with this bit 1
- ( useful info for debugging under VM ).
- 16-17 16-17 Address Space Control
- 00 Primary Space Mode when DAT on
- The linux kernel currently runs in this mode, CR1 is affiliated with
- this mode & points to the primary segment table origin etc.
- 01 Access register mode this mode is used in functions to
- copy data between kernel & user space.
- 10 Secondary space mode not used in linux however CR7 the
- register affiliated with this mode is & this & normally
- CR13=CR7 to allow us to copy data between kernel & user space.
- We do this as follows:
- We set ar2 to 0 to designate its
- affiliated gpr ( gpr2 )to point to primary=kernel space.
- We set ar4 to 1 to designate its
- affiliated gpr ( gpr4 ) to point to secondary=home=user space
- & then essentially do a memcopy(gpr2,gpr4,size) to
- copy data between the address spaces, the reason we use home space for the
- kernel & don't keep secondary space free is that code will not run in
- secondary space.
- 11 Home Space Mode all user programs run in this mode.
- it is affiliated with CR13.
- 18-19 18-19 Condition codes (CC)
- 20 20 Fixed point overflow mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event
- occur ( normally 0 )
- 21 21 Decimal overflow mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event occur
- ( normally 0 )
- 22 22 Exponent underflow mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event occur
- ( normally 0 )
- 23 23 Significance Mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event occur
- ( normally 0 )
- 24-31 24-30 Reserved Must be 0.
- 31 Extended Addressing Mode
- 32 Basic Addressing Mode
- Used to set addressing mode
- PSW 31 PSW 32
- 0 0 24 bit
- 0 1 31 bit
- 1 1 64 bit
- 32 1=31 bit addressing mode 0=24 bit addressing mode (for backward
- compatibility ), linux always runs with this bit set to 1
- 33-64 Instruction address.
- 33-63 Reserved must be 0
- 64-127 Address
- In 24 bits mode bits 64-103=0 bits 104-127 Address
- In 31 bits mode bits 64-96=0 bits 97-127 Address
- Note: unlike 31 bit mode on s/390 bit 96 must be zero
- when loading the address with LPSWE otherwise a
- specification exception occurs, LPSW is fully backward
- compatible.
-
-
- Prefix Page(s)
- --------------
- This per cpu memory area is too intimately tied to the processor not to mention.
- It exists between the real addresses 0-4096 on s/390 & 0-8192 z/Architecture & is exchanged
- with a 1 page on s/390 or 2 pages on z/Architecture in absolute storage by the set
- prefix instruction in linux'es startup.
- This page is mapped to a different prefix for each processor in an SMP configuration
- ( assuming the os designer is sane of course :-) ).
- Bytes 0-512 ( 200 hex ) on s/390 & 0-512,4096-4544,4604-5119 currently on z/Architecture
- are used by the processor itself for holding such information as exception indications &
- entry points for exceptions.
- Bytes after 0xc00 hex are used by linux for per processor globals on s/390 & z/Architecture
- ( there is a gap on z/Architecure too currently between 0xc00 & 1000 which linux uses ).
- The closest thing to this on traditional architectures is the interrupt
- vector table. This is a good thing & does simplify some of the kernel coding
- however it means that we now cannot catch stray NULL pointers in the
- kernel without hard coded checks.
- Address Spaces on Intel Linux
- =============================
- The traditional Intel Linux is approximately mapped as follows forgive
- the ascii art.
- 0xFFFFFFFF 4GB Himem *****************
- * *
- * Kernel Space *
- * *
- ***************** ****************
- User Space Himem (typically 0xC0000000 3GB )* User Stack * * *
- ***************** * *
- * Shared Libs * * Next Process *
- ***************** * to *
- * * <== * Run * <==
- * User Program * * *
- * Data BSS * * *
- * Text * * *
- * Sections * * *
- 0x00000000 ***************** ****************
- Now it is easy to see that on Intel it is quite easy to recognise a kernel address
- as being one greater than user space himem ( in this case 0xC0000000).
- & addresses of less than this are the ones in the current running program on this
- processor ( if an smp box ).
- If using the virtual machine ( VM ) as a debugger it is quite difficult to
- know which user process is running as the address space you are looking at
- could be from any process in the run queue.
- The limitation of Intels addressing technique is that the linux
- kernel uses a very simple real address to virtual addressing technique
- of Real Address=Virtual Address-User Space Himem.
- This means that on Intel the kernel linux can typically only address
- Himem=0xFFFFFFFF-0xC0000000=1GB & this is all the RAM these machines
- can typically use.
- They can lower User Himem to 2GB or lower & thus be
- able to use 2GB of RAM however this shrinks the maximum size
- of User Space from 3GB to 2GB they have a no win limit of 4GB unless
- they go to 64 Bit.
- On 390 our limitations & strengths make us slightly different.
- For backward compatibility ( because of the psw address hi bit which
- indicates whether we are in 31 or 64 bit mode ) we are only allowed
- use 31 bits (2GB) of our 32 bit addresses. However,
- we use entirely separate address spaces for the user & kernel.
- This means we can support 2GB of non Extended RAM on s/390, & more
- with the Extended memory managment swap device &
- currently 4TB of physical memory currently on z/Architecture.
- Address Spaces on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
- ==================================================
- Our addressing scheme is as follows
- Himem 0x7fffffff 2GB on s/390 ***************** ****************
- currently 0x3ffffffffff (2^42)-1 * User Stack * * *
- on z/Architecture. ***************** * *
- * Shared Libs * * *
- ***************** * *
- * * * Kernel *
- * User Program * * *
- * Data BSS * * *
- * Text * * *
- * Sections * * *
- 0x00000000 ***************** ****************
- This also means that we need to look at the PSW problem state bit
- or the addressing mode to decide whether we are looking at
- user or kernel space.
- Virtual Addresses on s/390 & z/Architecture
- ===========================================
- A virtual address on s/390 is made up of 3 parts
- The SX ( segment index, roughly corresponding to the PGD & PMD in linux terminology )
- being bits 1-11.
- The PX ( page index, corresponding to the page table entry (pte) in linux terminology )
- being bits 12-19.
- The remaining bits BX (the byte index are the offset in the page )
- i.e. bits 20 to 31.
- On z/Architecture in linux we currently make up an address from 4 parts.
- The region index bits (RX) 0-32 we currently use bits 22-32
- The segment index (SX) being bits 33-43
- The page index (PX) being bits 44-51
- The byte index (BX) being bits 52-63
- Notes:
- 1) s/390 has no PMD so the PMD is really the PGD also.
- A lot of this stuff is defined in pgtable.h.
- 2) Also seeing as s/390's page indexes are only 1k in size
- (bits 12-19 x 4 bytes per pte ) we use 1 ( page 4k )
- to make the best use of memory by updating 4 segment indices
- entries each time we mess with a PMD & use offsets
- 0,1024,2048 & 3072 in this page as for our segment indexes.
- On z/Architecture our page indexes are now 2k in size
- ( bits 12-19 x 8 bytes per pte ) we do a similar trick
- but only mess with 2 segment indices each time we mess with
- a PMD.
- 3) As z/Architecture supports upto a massive 5-level page table lookup we
- can only use 3 currently on Linux ( as this is all the generic kernel
- currently supports ) however this may change in future
- this allows us to access ( according to my sums )
- 4TB of virtual storage per process i.e.
- 4096*512(PTES)*1024(PMDS)*2048(PGD) = 4398046511104 bytes,
- enough for another 2 or 3 of years I think :-).
- to do this we use a region-third-table designation type in
- our address space control registers.
-
- The Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture Kernel Task Structure
- ==========================================================
- Each process/thread under Linux for S390 has its own kernel task_struct
- defined in linux/include/linux/sched.h
- The S390 on initialisation & resuming of a process on a cpu sets
- the __LC_KERNEL_STACK variable in the spare prefix area for this cpu
- ( which we use for per processor globals).
- The kernel stack pointer is intimately tied with the task stucture for
- each processor as follows.
- s/390
- ************************
- * 1 page kernel stack *
- * ( 4K ) *
- ************************
- * 1 page task_struct *
- * ( 4K ) *
- 8K aligned ************************
- z/Architecture
- ************************
- * 2 page kernel stack *
- * ( 8K ) *
- ************************
- * 2 page task_struct *
- * ( 8K ) *
- 16K aligned ************************
- What this means is that we don't need to dedicate any register or global variable
- to point to the current running process & can retrieve it with the following
- very simple construct for s/390 & one very similar for z/Architecture.
- static inline struct task_struct * get_current(void)
- {
- struct task_struct *current;
- __asm__("lhi %0,-8192nt"
- "nr %0,15"
- : "=r" (current) );
- return current;
- }
- i.e. just anding the current kernel stack pointer with the mask -8192.
- Thankfully because Linux dosen't have support for nested IO interrupts
- & our devices have large buffers can survive interrupts being shut for
- short amounts of time we don't need a separate stack for interrupts.
- Register Usage & Stackframes on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
- =================================================================
- Overview:
- ---------
- This is the code that gcc produces at the top & the bottom of
- each function, it usually is fairly consistent & similar from
- function to function & if you know its layout you can probalby
- make some headway in finding the ultimate cause of a problem
- after a crash without a source level debugger.
- Note: To follow stackframes requires a knowledge of C or Pascal &
- limited knowledge of one assembly language.
- It should be noted that there are some differences between the
- s/390 & z/Architecture stack layouts as the z/Architecture stack layout didn't have
- to maintain compatibility with older linkage formats.
- Glossary:
- ---------
- alloca:
- This is a built in compiler function for runtime allocation
- of extra space on the callers stack which is obviously freed
- up on function exit ( e.g. the caller may choose to allocate nothing
- of a buffer of 4k if required for temporary purposes ), it generates
- very efficent code ( a few cycles ) when compared to alternatives
- like malloc.
- automatics: These are local variables on the stack,
- i.e they aren't in registers & they aren't static.
- back-chain:
- This is a pointer to the stack pointer before entering a
- framed functions ( see frameless function ) prologue got by
- deferencing the address of the current stack pointer,
- i.e. got by accessing the 32 bit value at the stack pointers
- current location.
- base-pointer:
- This is a pointer to the back of the literal pool which
- is an area just behind each procedure used to store constants
- in each function.
- call-clobbered: The caller probably needs to save these registers if there
- is something of value in them, on the stack or elsewhere before making a
- call to another procedure so that it can restore it later.
- epilogue:
- The code generated by the compiler to return to the caller.
- frameless-function
- A frameless function in Linux for s390 & z/Architecture is one which doesn't
- need more than the register save area ( 96 bytes on s/390, 160 on z/Architecture )
- given to it by the caller.
- A frameless function never:
- 1) Sets up a back chain.
- 2) Calls alloca.
- 3) Calls other normal functions
- 4) Has automatics.
- GOT-pointer:
- This is a pointer to the global-offset-table in ELF
- ( Executable Linkable Format, Linux'es most common executable format ),
- all globals & shared library objects are found using this pointer.
- lazy-binding
- ELF shared libraries are typically only loaded when routines in the shared
- library are actually first called at runtime. This is lazy binding.
- procedure-linkage-table
- This is a table found from the GOT which contains pointers to routines
- in other shared libraries which can't be called to by easier means.
- prologue:
- The code generated by the compiler to set up the stack frame.
- outgoing-args:
- This is extra area allocated on the stack of the calling function if the
- parameters for the callee's cannot all be put in registers, the same
- area can be reused by each function the caller calls.
- routine-descriptor:
- A COFF executable format based concept of a procedure reference
- actually being 8 bytes or more as opposed to a simple pointer to the routine.
- This is typically defined as follows
- Routine Descriptor offset 0=Pointer to Function
- Routine Descriptor offset 4=Pointer to Table of Contents
- The table of contents/TOC is roughly equivalent to a GOT pointer.
- & it means that shared libraries etc. can be shared between several
- environments each with their own TOC.
-
- static-chain: This is used in nested functions a concept adopted from pascal
- by gcc not used in ansi C or C++ ( although quite useful ), basically it
- is a pointer used to reference local variables of enclosing functions.
- You might come across this stuff once or twice in your lifetime.
- e.g.
- The function below should return 11 though gcc may get upset & toss warnings
- about unused variables.
- int FunctionA(int a)
- {
- int b;
- FunctionC(int c)
- {
- b=c+1;
- }
- FunctionC(10);
- return(b);
- }
- s/390 & z/Architecture Register usage
- =====================================
- r0 used by syscalls/assembly call-clobbered
- r1 used by syscalls/assembly call-clobbered
- r2 argument 0 / return value 0 call-clobbered
- r3 argument 1 / return value 1 (if long long) call-clobbered
- r4 argument 2 call-clobbered
- r5 argument 3 call-clobbered
- r6 argument 5 saved
- r7 pointer-to arguments 5 to ... saved
- r8 this & that saved
- r9 this & that saved
- r10 static-chain ( if nested function ) saved
- r11 frame-pointer ( if function used alloca ) saved
- r12 got-pointer saved
- r13 base-pointer saved
- r14 return-address saved
- r15 stack-pointer saved
- f0 argument 0 / return value ( float/double ) call-clobbered
- f2 argument 1 call-clobbered
- f4 z/Architecture argument 2 saved
- f6 z/Architecture argument 3 saved
- The remaining floating points
- f1,f3,f5 f7-f15 are call-clobbered.
- Notes:
- ------
- 1) The only requirement is that registers which are used
- by the callee are saved, e.g. the compiler is perfectly
- capible of using r11 for purposes other than a frame a
- frame pointer if a frame pointer is not needed.
- 2) In functions with variable arguments e.g. printf the calling procedure
- is identical to one without variable arguments & the same number of
- parameters. However, the prologue of this function is somewhat more
- hairy owing to it having to move these parameters to the stack to
- get va_start, va_arg & va_end to work.
- 3) Access registers are currently unused by gcc but are used in
- the kernel. Possibilities exist to use them at the moment for
- temporary storage but it isn't recommended.
- 4) Only 4 of the floating point registers are used for
- parameter passing as older machines such as G3 only have only 4
- & it keeps the stack frame compatible with other compilers.
- However with IEEE floating point emulation under linux on the
- older machines you are free to use the other 12.
- 5) A long long or double parameter cannot be have the
- first 4 bytes in a register & the second four bytes in the
- outgoing args area. It must be purely in the outgoing args
- area if crossing this boundary.
- 6) Floating point parameters are mixed with outgoing args
- on the outgoing args area in the order the are passed in as parameters.
- 7) Floating point arguments 2 & 3 are saved in the outgoing args area for
- z/Architecture
- Stack Frame Layout
- ------------------
- s/390 z/Architecture
- 0 0 back chain ( a 0 here signifies end of back chain )
- 4 8 eos ( end of stack, not used on Linux for S390 used in other linkage formats )
- 8 16 glue used in other s/390 linkage formats for saved routine descriptors etc.
- 12 24 glue used in other s/390 linkage formats for saved routine descriptors etc.
- 16 32 scratch area
- 20 40 scratch area
- 24 48 saved r6 of caller function
- 28 56 saved r7 of caller function
- 32 64 saved r8 of caller function
- 36 72 saved r9 of caller function
- 40 80 saved r10 of caller function
- 44 88 saved r11 of caller function
- 48 96 saved r12 of caller function
- 52 104 saved r13 of caller function
- 56 112 saved r14 of caller function
- 60 120 saved r15 of caller function
- 64 128 saved f4 of caller function
- 72 132 saved f6 of caller function
- 80 undefined
- 96 160 outgoing args passed from caller to callee
- 96+x 160+x possible stack alignment ( 8 bytes desirable )
- 96+x+y 160+x+y alloca space of caller ( if used )
- 96+x+y+z 160+x+y+z automatics of caller ( if used )
- 0 back-chain
- A sample program with comments.
- ===============================
- Comments on the function test
- -----------------------------
- 1) It didn't need to set up a pointer to the constant pool gpr13 as it isn't used
- ( :-( ).
- 2) This is a frameless function & no stack is bought.
- 3) The compiler was clever enough to recognise that it could return the
- value in r2 as well as use it for the passed in parameter ( :-) ).
- 4) The basr ( branch relative & save ) trick works as follows the instruction
- has a special case with r0,r0 with some instruction operands is understood as
- the literal value 0, some risc architectures also do this ). So now
- we are branching to the next address & the address new program counter is
- in r13,so now we subtract the size of the function prologue we have executed
- + the size of the literal pool to get to the top of the literal pool
- 0040037c int test(int b)
- { # Function prologue below
- 40037c: 90 de f0 34 stm %r13,%r14,52(%r15) # Save registers r13 & r14
- 400380: 0d d0 basr %r13,%r0 # Set up pointer to constant pool using
- 400382: a7 da ff fa ahi %r13,-6 # basr trick
- return(5+b);
- # Huge main program
- 400386: a7 2a 00 05 ahi %r2,5 # add 5 to r2
- # Function epilogue below
- 40038a: 98 de f0 34 lm %r13,%r14,52(%r15) # restore registers r13 & 14
- 40038e: 07 fe br %r14 # return
- }
- Comments on the function main
- -----------------------------
- 1) The compiler did this function optimally ( 8-) )
- Literal pool for main.
- 400390: ff ff ff ec .long 0xffffffec
- main(int argc,char *argv[])
- { # Function prologue below
- 400394: 90 bf f0 2c stm %r11,%r15,44(%r15) # Save necessary registers
- 400398: 18 0f lr %r0,%r15 # copy stack pointer to r0
- 40039a: a7 fa ff a0 ahi %r15,-96 # Make area for callee saving
- 40039e: 0d d0 basr %r13,%r0 # Set up r13 to point to
- 4003a0: a7 da ff f0 ahi %r13,-16 # literal pool
- 4003a4: 50 00 f0 00 st %r0,0(%r15) # Save backchain
- return(test(5)); # Main Program Below
- 4003a8: 58 e0 d0 00 l %r14,0(%r13) # load relative address of test from
- # literal pool
- 4003ac: a7 28 00 05 lhi %r2,5 # Set first parameter to 5
- 4003b0: 4d ee d0 00 bas %r14,0(%r14,%r13) # jump to test setting r14 as return
- # address using branch & save instruction.
- # Function Epilogue below
- 4003b4: 98 bf f0 8c lm %r11,%r15,140(%r15)# Restore necessary registers.
- 4003b8: 07 fe br %r14 # return to do program exit
- }
- Compiler updates
- ----------------
- main(int argc,char *argv[])
- {
- 4004fc: 90 7f f0 1c stm %r7,%r15,28(%r15)
- 400500: a7 d5 00 04 bras %r13,400508 <main+0xc>
- 400504: 00 40 04 f4 .long 0x004004f4
- # compiler now puts constant pool in code to so it saves an instruction
- 400508: 18 0f lr %r0,%r15
- 40050a: a7 fa ff a0 ahi %r15,-96
- 40050e: 50 00 f0 00 st %r0,0(%r15)
- return(test(5));
- 400512: 58 10 d0 00 l %r1,0(%r13)
- 400516: a7 28 00 05 lhi %r2,5
- 40051a: 0d e1 basr %r14,%r1
- # compiler adds 1 extra instruction to epilogue this is done to
- # avoid processor pipeline stalls owing to data dependencies on g5 &
- # above as register 14 in the old code was needed directly after being loaded
- # by the lm %r11,%r15,140(%r15) for the br %14.
- 40051c: 58 40 f0 98 l %r4,152(%r15)
- 400520: 98 7f f0 7c lm %r7,%r15,124(%r15)
- 400524: 07 f4 br %r4
- }
- Hartmut ( our compiler developer ) also has been threatening to take out the
- stack backchain in optimised code as this also causes pipeline stalls, you
- have been warned.
- 64 bit z/Architecture code disassembly
- --------------------------------------
- If you understand the stuff above you'll understand the stuff
- below too so I'll avoid repeating myself & just say that
- some of the instructions have g's on the end of them to indicate
- they are 64 bit & the stack offsets are a bigger,
- the only other difference you'll find between 32 & 64 bit is that
- we now use f4 & f6 for floating point arguments on 64 bit.
- 00000000800005b0 <test>:
- int test(int b)
- {
- return(5+b);
- 800005b0: a7 2a 00 05 ahi %r2,5
- 800005b4: b9 14 00 22 lgfr %r2,%r2 # downcast to integer
- 800005b8: 07 fe br %r14
- 800005ba: 07 07 bcr 0,%r7
- }
- 00000000800005bc <main>:
- main(int argc,char *argv[])
- {
- 800005bc: eb bf f0 58 00 24 stmg %r11,%r15,88(%r15)
- 800005c2: b9 04 00 1f lgr %r1,%r15
- 800005c6: a7 fb ff 60 aghi %r15,-160
- 800005ca: e3 10 f0 00 00 24 stg %r1,0(%r15)
- return(test(5));
- 800005d0: a7 29 00 05 lghi %r2,5
- # brasl allows jumps > 64k & is overkill here bras would do fune
- 800005d4: c0 e5 ff ff ff ee brasl %r14,800005b0 <test>
- 800005da: e3 40 f1 10 00 04 lg %r4,272(%r15)
- 800005e0: eb bf f0 f8 00 04 lmg %r11,%r15,248(%r15)
- 800005e6: 07 f4 br %r4
- }
- Compiling programs for debugging on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
- ====================================================================
- -gdwarf-2 now works it should be considered the default debugging
- format for s/390 & z/Architecture as it is more reliable for debugging
- shared libraries, normal -g debugging works much better now
- Thanks to the IBM java compiler developers bug reports.
- This is typically done adding/appending the flags -g or -gdwarf-2 to the
- CFLAGS & LDFLAGS variables Makefile of the program concerned.
- If using gdb & you would like accurate displays of registers &
- stack traces compile without optimisation i.e make sure
- that there is no -O2 or similar on the CFLAGS line of the Makefile &
- the emitted gcc commands, obviously this will produce worse code
- ( not advisable for shipment ) but it is an aid to the debugging process.
- This aids debugging because the compiler will copy parameters passed in
- in registers onto the stack so backtracing & looking at passed in
- parameters will work, however some larger programs which use inline functions
- will not compile without optimisation.
- Debugging with optimisation has since much improved after fixing
- some bugs, please make sure you are using gdb-5.0 or later developed
- after Nov'2000.
- Figuring out gcc compile errors
- ===============================
- If you are getting a lot of syntax errors compiling a program & the problem
- isn't blatantly obvious from the source.
- It often helps to just preprocess the file, this is done with the -E
- option in gcc.
- What this does is that it runs through the very first phase of compilation
- ( compilation in gcc is done in several stages & gcc calls many programs to
- achieve its end result ) with the -E option gcc just calls the gcc preprocessor (cpp).
- The c preprocessor does the following, it joins all the files #included together
- recursively ( #include files can #include other files ) & also the c file you wish to compile.
- It puts a fully qualified path of the #included files in a comment & it
- does macro expansion.
- This is useful for debugging because
- 1) You can double check whether the files you expect to be included are the ones
- that are being included ( e.g. double check that you aren't going to the i386 asm directory ).
- 2) Check that macro definitions aren't clashing with typedefs,
- 3) Check that definitons aren't being used before they are being included.
- 4) Helps put the line emitting the error under the microscope if it contains macros.
- For convenience the Linux kernel's makefile will do preprocessing automatically for you
- by suffixing the file you want built with .i ( instead of .o )
- e.g.
- from the linux directory type
- make arch/s390/kernel/signal.i
- this will build
- s390-gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home1/barrow/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer
- -fno-strict-aliasing -D__SMP__ -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -E arch/s390/kernel/signal.c
- > arch/s390/kernel/signal.i
- Now look at signal.i you should see something like.
- # 1 "/home1/barrow/linux/include/asm/types.h" 1
- typedef unsigned short umode_t;
- typedef __signed__ char __s8;
- typedef unsigned char __u8;
- typedef __signed__ short __s16;
- typedef unsigned short __u16;
- If instead you are getting errors further down e.g.
- unknown instruction:2515 "move.l" or better still unknown instruction:2515
- "Fixme not implemented yet, call Martin" you are probably are attempting to compile some code
- meant for another architecture or code that is simply not implemented, with a fixme statement
- stuck into the inline assembly code so that the author of the file now knows he has work to do.
- To look at the assembly emitted by gcc just before it is about to call gas ( the gnu assembler )
- use the -S option.
- Again for your convenience the Linux kernel's Makefile will hold your hand &
- do all this donkey work for you also by building the file with the .s suffix.
- e.g.
- from the Linux directory type
- make arch/s390/kernel/signal.s
- s390-gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home1/barrow/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer
- -fno-strict-aliasing -D__SMP__ -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -S arch/s390/kernel/signal.c
- -o arch/s390/kernel/signal.s
- This will output something like, ( please note the constant pool & the useful comments
- in the prologue to give you a hand at interpreting it ).
- .LC54:
- .string "misaligned (__u16 *) in __xchgn"
- .LC57:
- .string "misaligned (__u32 *) in __xchgn"
- .L$PG1: # Pool sys_sigsuspend
- .LC192:
- .long -262401
- .LC193:
- .long -1
- .LC194:
- .long schedule-.L$PG1
- .LC195:
- .long do_signal-.L$PG1
- .align 4
- .globl sys_sigsuspend
- .type sys_sigsuspend,@function
- sys_sigsuspend:
- # leaf function 0
- # automatics 16
- # outgoing args 0
- # need frame pointer 0
- # call alloca 0
- # has varargs 0
- # incoming args (stack) 0
- # function length 168
- STM 8,15,32(15)
- LR 0,15
- AHI 15,-112
- BASR 13,0
- .L$CO1: AHI 13,.L$PG1-.L$CO1
- ST 0,0(15)
- LR 8,2
- N 5,.LC192-.L$PG1(13)
- Adding -g to the above output makes the output even more useful
- e.g. typing
- make CC:="s390-gcc -g" kernel/sched.s
- which compiles.
- s390-gcc -g -D__KERNEL__ -I/home/barrow/linux-2.3/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -S kernel/sched.c -o kernel/sched.s
- also outputs stabs ( debugger ) info, from this info you can find out the
- offsets & sizes of various elements in structures.
- e.g. the stab for the structure
- struct rlimit {
- unsigned long rlim_cur;
- unsigned long rlim_max;
- };
- is
- .stabs "rlimit:T(151,2)=s8rlim_cur:(0,5),0,32;rlim_max:(0,5),32,32;;",128,0,0,0
- from this stab you can see that
- rlimit_cur starts at bit offset 0 & is 32 bits in size
- rlimit_max starts at bit offset 32 & is 32 bits in size.
- Debugging Tools:
- ================
- objdump
- =======
- This is a tool with many options the most useful being ( if compiled with -g).
- objdump --source <victim program or object file> > <victims debug listing >
- The whole kernel can be compiled like this ( Doing this will make a 17MB kernel
- & a 200 MB listing ) however you have to strip it before building the image
- using the strip command to make it a more reasonable size to boot it.
- A source/assembly mixed dump of the kernel can be done with the line
- objdump --source vmlinux > vmlinux.lst
- Also if the file isn't compiled -g this will output as much debugging information
- as it can ( e.g. function names ), however, this is very slow as it spends lots
- of time searching for debugging info, the following self explanitory line should be used
- instead if the code isn't compiled -g.
- objdump --disassemble-all --syms vmlinux > vmlinux.lst
- as it is much faster
- As hard drive space is valuble most of us use the following approach.
- 1) Look at the emitted psw on the console to find the crash address in the kernel.
- 2) Look at the file System.map ( in the linux directory ) produced when building
- the kernel to find the closest address less than the current PSW to find the
- offending function.
- 3) use grep or similar to search the source tree looking for the source file
- with this function if you don't know where it is.
- 4) rebuild this object file with -g on, as an example suppose the file was
- ( /arch/s390/kernel/signal.o )
- 5) Assuming the file with the erroneous function is signal.c Move to the base of the
- Linux source tree.
- 6) rm /arch/s390/kernel/signal.o
- 7) make /arch/s390/kernel/signal.o
- 8) watch the gcc command line emitted
- 9) type it in again or alernatively cut & paste it on the console adding the -g option.
- 10) objdump --source arch/s390/kernel/signal.o > signal.lst
- This will output the source & the assembly intermixed, as the snippet below shows
- This will unfortunately output addresses which aren't the same
- as the kernel ones you should be able to get around the mental arithmetic
- by playing with the --adjust-vma parameter to objdump.
- extern inline void spin_lock(spinlock_t *lp)
- {
- a0: 18 34 lr %r3,%r4
- a2: a7 3a 03 bc ahi %r3,956
- __asm__ __volatile(" lhi 1,-1n"
- a6: a7 18 ff ff lhi %r1,-1
- aa: 1f 00 slr %r0,%r0
- ac: ba 01 30 00 cs %r0,%r1,0(%r3)
- b0: a7 44 ff fd jm aa <sys_sigsuspend+0x2e>
- saveset = current->blocked;
- b4: d2 07 f0 68 mvc 104(8,%r15),972(%r4)
- b8: 43 cc
- return (set->sig[0] & mask) != 0;
- }
- 6) If debugging under VM go down to that section in the document for more info.
- I now have a tool which takes the pain out of --adjust-vma
- & you are able to do something like
- make /arch/s390/kernel/traps.lst
- & it automatically generates the correctly relocated entries for
- the text segment in traps.lst.
- This tool is now standard in linux distro's in scripts/makelst
- strace:
- -------
- Q. What is it ?
- A. It is a tool for intercepting calls to the kernel & logging them
- to a file & on the screen.
- Q. What use is it ?
- A. You can used it to find out what files a particular program opens.
- Example 1
- ---------
- If you wanted to know does ping work but didn't have the source
- strace ping -c 1 127.0.0.1
- & then look at the man pages for each of the syscalls below,
- ( In fact this is sometimes easier than looking at some spagetti
- source which conditionally compiles for several architectures )
- Not everything that it throws out needs to make sense immeadiately
- Just looking quickly you can see that it is making up a RAW socket
- for the ICMP protocol.
- Doing an alarm(10) for a 10 second timeout
- & doing a gettimeofday call before & after each read to see
- how long the replies took, & writing some text to stdout so the user
- has an idea what is going on.
- socket(PF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_ICMP) = 3
- getuid() = 0
- setuid(0) = 0
- stat("/usr/share/locale/C/libc.cat", 0xbffff134) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
- stat("/usr/share/locale/libc/C", 0xbffff134) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
- stat("/usr/local/share/locale/C/libc.cat", 0xbffff134) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
- getpid() = 353
- setsockopt(3, SOL_SOCKET, SO_BROADCAST, [1], 4) = 0
- setsockopt(3, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVBUF, [49152], 4) = 0
- fstat(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(3, 1), ...}) = 0
- mmap(0, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40008000
- ioctl(1, TCGETS, {B9600 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = 0
- write(1, "PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 d"..., 42PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
- ) = 42
- sigaction(SIGINT, {0x8049ba0, [], SA_RESTART}, {SIG_DFL}) = 0
- sigaction(SIGALRM, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}, {SIG_DFL}) = 0
- gettimeofday({948904719, 138951}, NULL) = 0
- sendto(3, "10 D201a1 17#217830736"..., 64, 0, {sin_family=AF_INET,
- sin_port=htons(0), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, 16) = 64
- sigaction(SIGALRM, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}) = 0
- sigaction(SIGALRM, {0x8049ba0, [], SA_RESTART}, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}) = 0
- alarm(10) = 0
- recvfrom(3, "E T 005 @1|r177 1177"..., 192, 0,
- {sin_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(50882), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, [16]) = 84
- gettimeofday({948904719, 160224}, NULL) = 0
- recvfrom(3, "E T 006 3771275p177 "..., 192, 0,
- {sin_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(50882), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, [16]) = 84
- gettimeofday({948904719, 166952}, NULL) = 0
- write(1, "64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_se"...,
- 5764 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=28.0 ms
- Example 2
- ---------
- strace passwd 2>&1 | grep open
- produces the following output
- open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3
- open("/opt/kde/lib/libc.so.5", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
- open("/lib/libc.so.5", O_RDONLY) = 3
- open("/dev", O_RDONLY) = 3
- open("/var/run/utmp", O_RDONLY) = 3
- open("/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY) = 3
- open("/etc/shadow", O_RDONLY) = 3
- open("/etc/login.defs", O_RDONLY) = 4
- open("/dev/tty", O_RDONLY) = 4
- The 2>&1 is done to redirect stderr to stdout & grep is then filtering this input
- through the pipe for each line containing the string open.
- Example 3
- ---------
- Getting sophistocated
- telnetd crashes on & I don't know why
- Steps
- -----
- 1) Replace the following line in /etc/inetd.conf
- telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/in.telnetd -h
- with
- telnet stream tcp nowait root /blah
- 2) Create the file /blah with the following contents to start tracing telnetd
- #!/bin/bash
- /usr/bin/strace -o/t1 -f /usr/sbin/in.telnetd -h
- 3) chmod 700 /blah to make it executable only to root
- 4)
- killall -HUP inetd
- or ps aux | grep inetd
- get inetd's process id
- & kill -HUP inetd to restart it.
- Important options
- -----------------
- -o is used to tell strace to output to a file in our case t1 in the root directory
- -f is to follow children i.e.
- e.g in our case above telnetd will start the login process & subsequently a shell like bash.
- You will be able to tell which is which from the process ID's listed on the left hand side
- of the strace output.
- -p<pid> will tell strace to attach to a running process, yup this can be done provided
- it isn't being traced or debugged already & you have enough privileges,
- the reason 2 processes cannot trace or debug the same program is that strace
- becomes the parent process of the one being debugged & processes ( unlike people )
- can have only one parent.
- However the file /t1 will get big quite quickly
- to test it telnet 127.0.0.1
- now look at what files in.telnetd execve'd
- 413 execve("/usr/sbin/in.telnetd", ["/usr/sbin/in.telnetd", "-h"], [/* 17 vars */]) = 0
- 414 execve("/bin/login", ["/bin/login", "-h", "localhost", "-p"], [/* 2 vars */]) = 0
- Whey it worked!.
- Other hints:
- ------------
- If the program is not very interactive ( i.e. not much keyboard input )
- & is crashing in one architecture but not in another you can do
- an strace of both programs under as identical a scenario as you can
- on both architectures outputting to a file then.
- do a diff of the two traces using the diff program
- i.e.
- diff output1 output2
- & maybe you'll be able to see where the call paths differed, this
- is possibly near the cause of the crash.
- More info
- ---------
- Look at man pages for strace & the various syscalls
- e.g. man strace, man alarm, man socket.
- Performance Debugging
- =====================
- gcc is capible of compiling in profiling code just add the -p option
- to the CFLAGS, this obviously affects program size & performance.
- This can be used by the gprof gnu profiling tool or the
- gcov the gnu code coverage tool ( code coverage is a means of testing
- code quality by checking if all the code in an executable in exercised by
- a tester ).
- Using top to find out where processes are sleeping in the kernel
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
- To do this copy the System.map from the root directory where
- the linux kernel was built to the /boot directory on your
- linux machine.
- Start top
- Now type fU<return>
- You should see a new field called WCHAN which
- tells you where each process is sleeping here is a typical output.
-
- 6:59pm up 41 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
- 28 processes: 27 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
- CPU states: 0.0% user, 0.1% system, 0.0% nice, 99.8% idle
- Mem: 254900K av, 45976K used, 208924K free, 0K shrd, 28636K buff
- Swap: 0K av, 0K used, 0K free 8620K cached
- PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE WCHAN STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
- 750 root 12 0 848 848 700 do_select S 0 0.1 0.3 0:00 in.telnetd
- 767 root 16 0 1140 1140 964 R 0 0.1 0.4 0:00 top
- 1 root 8 0 212 212 180 do_select S 0 0.0 0.0 0:00 init
- 2 root 9 0 0 0 0 down_inte SW 0 0.0 0.0 0:00 kmcheck
- The time command
- ----------------
- Another related command is the time command which gives you an indication
- of where a process is spending the majority of its time.
- e.g.
- time ping -c 5 nc
- outputs
- real 0m4.054s
- user 0m0.010s
- sys 0m0.010s
- Debugging under VM
- ==================
- Notes
- -----
- Addresses & values in the VM debugger are always hex never decimal
- Address ranges are of the format <HexValue1>-<HexValue2> or <HexValue1>.<HexValue2>
- e.g. The address range 0x2000 to 0x3000 can be described described as
- 2000-3000 or 2000.1000
- The VM Debugger is case insensitive.
- VM's strengths are usually other debuggers weaknesses you can get at any resource
- no matter how sensitive e.g. memory managment resources,change address translation
- in the PSW. For kernel hacking you will reap dividends if you get good at it.
- The VM Debugger displays operators but not operands, probably because some
- of it was written when memory was expensive & the programmer was probably proud that
- it fitted into 2k of memory & the programmers & didn't want to shock hardcore VM'ers by
- changing the interface :-), also the debugger displays useful information on the same line &
- the author of the code probably felt that it was a good idea not to go over
- the 80 columns on the screen.
- As some of you are probably in a panic now this isn't as unintuitive as it may seem
- as the 390 instructions are easy to decode mentally & you can make a good guess at a lot
- of them as all the operands are nibble ( half byte aligned ) & if you have an objdump listing
- also it is quite easy to follow, if you don't have an objdump listing keep a copy of
- the s/390 Reference Summary & look at between pages 2 & 7 or alternatively the
- s/390 principles of operation.
- e.g. even I can guess that
- 0001AFF8' LR 180F CC 0
- is a ( load register ) lr r0,r15
- Also it is very easy to tell the length of a 390 instruction from the 2 most significant
- bits in the instruction ( not that this info is really useful except if you are trying to
- make sense of a hexdump of code ).
- Here is a table
- Bits Instruction Length
- ------------------------------------------
- 00 2 Bytes
- 01 4 Bytes
- 10 4 Bytes
- 11 6 Bytes
- The debugger also displays other useful info on the same line such as the
- addresses being operated on destination addresses of branches & condition codes.
- e.g.
- 00019736' AHI A7DAFF0E CC 1
- 000198BA' BRC A7840004 -> 000198C2' CC 0
- 000198CE' STM 900EF068 >> 0FA95E78 CC 2
- Useful VM debugger commands
- ---------------------------
- I suppose I'd better mention this before I start
- to list the current active traces do
- Q TR
- there can be a maximum of 255 of these per set
- ( more about trace sets later ).
- To stop traces issue a
- TR END.
- To delete a particular breakpoint issue
- TR DEL <breakpoint number>
- The PA1 key drops to CP mode so you can issue debugger commands,
- Doing alt c (on my 3270 console at least ) clears the screen.
- hitting b <enter> comes back to the running operating system
- from cp mode ( in our case linux ).
- It is typically useful to add shortcuts to your profile.exec file
- if you have one ( this is roughly equivalent to autoexec.bat in DOS ).
- file here are a few from mine.
- /* this gives me command history on issuing f12 */
- set pf12 retrieve
- /* this continues */
- set pf8 imm b
- /* goes to trace set a */
- set pf1 imm tr goto a
- /* goes to trace set b */
- set pf2 imm tr goto b
- /* goes to trace set c */
- set pf3 imm tr goto c
- Instruction Tracing
- -------------------
- Setting a simple breakpoint
- TR I PSWA <address>
- To debug a particular function try
- TR I R <function address range>
- TR I on its own will single step.
- TR I DATA <MNEMONIC> <OPTIONAL RANGE> will trace for particular mnemonics
- e.g.
- TR I DATA 4D R 0197BC.4000
- will trace for BAS'es ( opcode 4D ) in the range 0197BC.4000
- if you were inclined you could add traces for all branch instructions &
- suffix them with the run prefix so you would have a backtrace on screen
- when a program crashes.
- TR BR <INTO OR FROM> will trace branches into or out of an address.
- e.g.
- TR BR INTO 0 is often quite useful if a program is getting awkward & deciding
- to branch to 0 & crashing as this will stop at the address before in jumps to 0.
- TR I R <address range> RUN cmd d g
- single steps a range of addresses but stays running &
- displays the gprs on each step.
- Displaying & modifying Registers
- --------------------------------
- D G will display all the gprs
- Adding a extra G to all the commands is neccessary to access the full 64 bit
- content in VM on z/Architecture obviously this isn't required for access registers
- as these are still 32 bit.
- e.g. DGG instead of DG
- D X will display all the control registers
- D AR will display all the access registers
- D AR4-7 will display access registers 4 to 7
- CPU ALL D G will display the GRPS of all CPUS in the configuration
- D PSW will display the current PSW
- st PSW 2000 will put the value 2000 into the PSW &
- cause crash your machine.
- D PREFIX displays the prefix offset
- Displaying Memory
- -----------------
- To display memory mapped using the current PSW's mapping try
- D <range>
- To make VM display a message each time it hits a particular address & continue try
- D I<range> will disassemble/display a range of instructions.
- ST addr 32 bit word will store a 32 bit aligned address
- D T<range> will display the EBCDIC in an address ( if you are that way inclined )
- D R<range> will display real addresses ( without DAT ) but with prefixing.
- There are other complex options to display if you need to get at say home space
- but are in primary space the easiest thing to do is to temporarily
- modify the PSW to the other addressing mode, display the stuff & then
- restore it.
-
- Hints
- -----
- If you want to issue a debugger command without halting your virtual machine with the
- PA1 key try prefixing the command with #CP e.g.
- #cp tr i pswa 2000
- also suffixing most debugger commands with RUN will cause them not
- to stop just display the mnemonic at the current instruction on the console.
- If you have several breakpoints you want to put into your program &
- you get fed up of cross referencing with System.map
- you can do the following trick for several symbols.
- grep do_signal System.map
- which emits the following among other things
- 0001f4e0 T do_signal
- now you can do
- TR I PSWA 0001f4e0 cmd msg * do_signal
- This sends a message to your own console each time do_signal is entered.
- ( As an aside I wrote a perl script once which automatically generated a REXX
- script with breakpoints on every kernel procedure, this isn't a good idea
- because there are thousands of these routines & VM can only set 255 breakpoints
- at a time so you nearly had to spend as long pruning the file down as you would
- entering the msg's by hand ),however, the trick might be useful for a single object file.
- On linux'es 3270 emulator x3270 there is a very useful option under the file ment
- Save Screens In File this is very good of keeping a copy of traces.
- From CMS help <command name> will give you online help on a particular command.
- e.g.
- HELP DISPLAY
- Also CP has a file called profile.exec which automatically gets called
- on startup of CMS ( like autoexec.bat ), keeping on a DOS analogy session
- CP has a feature similar to doskey, it may be useful for you to
- use profile.exec to define some keystrokes.
- e.g.
- SET PF9 IMM B
- This does a single step in VM on pressing F8.
- SET PF10 ^
- This sets up the ^ key.
- which can be used for ^c (ctrl-c),^z (ctrl-z) which can't be typed directly into some 3270 consoles.
- SET PF11 ^-
- This types the starting keystrokes for a sysrq see SysRq below.
- SET PF12 RETRIEVE
- This retrieves command history on pressing F12.
- Sometimes in VM the display is set up to scroll automatically this
- can be very annoying if there are messages you wish to look at
- to stop this do
- TERM MORE 255 255
- This will nearly stop automatic screen updates, however it will
- cause a denial of service if lots of messages go to the 3270 console,
- so it would be foolish to use this as the default on a production machine.
-
- Tracing particular processes
- ----------------------------
- The kernels text segment is intentionally at an address in memory that it will
- very seldom collide with text segments of user programs ( thanks Martin ),
- this simplifies debugging the kernel.
- However it is quite common for user processes to have addresses which collide
- this can make debugging a particular process under VM painful under normal
- circumstances as the process may change when doing a
- TR I R <address range>.
- Thankfully after reading VM's online help I figured out how to debug
- particular processes in 31 bit mode, however, according to the current
- VM online help documentation the method described below uses
- TR STO or STD which don't currently work on z/Series while in
- 64-bit mode.
- Your first problem is to find the STD ( segment table designation )
- of the program you wish to debug.
- There are several ways you can do this here are a few
- 1) objdump --syms <program to be debugged> | grep main
- To get the address of main in the program.
- tr i pswa <address of main>
- Start the program, if VM drops to CP on what looks like the entry
- point of the main function this is most likely the process you wish to debug.
- Now do a D X13 or D XG13 on z/Architecture.
- On 31 bit the STD is bits 1-19 ( the STO segment table origin )
- & 25-31 ( the STL segment table length ) of CR13.
- now type
- TR I R STD <CR13's value> 0.7fffffff
- e.g.
- TR I R STD 8F32E1FF 0.7fffffff
- Another very useful variation is
- TR STORE INTO STD <CR13's value> <address range>
- for finding out when a particular variable changes.
- An alternative way of finding the STD of a currently running process
- is to do the following, ( this method is more complex but
- could be quite convient if you aren't updating the kernel much &
- so your kernel structures will stay constant for a reasonable period of
- time ).
- grep task /proc/<pid>/status
- from this you should see something like
- task: 0f160000 ksp: 0f161de8 pt_regs: 0f161f68
- This now gives you a pointer to the task structure.
- Now make CC:="s390-gcc -g" kernel/sched.s
- To get the task_struct stabinfo.
- ( task_struct is defined in include/linux/sched.h ).
- Now we want to look at
- task->active_mm->pgd
- on my machine the active_mm in the task structure stab is
- active_mm:(4,12),672,32
- its offset is 672/8=84=0x54
- the pgd member in the mm_struct stab is
- pgd:(4,6)=*(29,5),96,32
- so its offset is 96/8=12=0xc
- so we'll
- hexdump -s 0xf160054 /dev/mem | more
- i.e. task_struct+active_mm offset
- to look at the active_mm member
- f160054 0fee cc60 0019 e334 0000 0000 0000 0011
- hexdump -s 0x0feecc6c /dev/mem | more
- i.e. active_mm+pgd offset
- feecc6c 0f2c 0000 0000 0001 0000 0001 0000 0010
- we get something like
- now do
- TR I R STD <pgd|0x7f> 0.7fffffff
- i.e. the 0x7f is added because the pgd only
- gives the page table origin & we need to set the low bits
- to the maximum possible segment table length.
- TR I R STD 0f2c007f 0.7fffffff
- on z/Architecture you'll probably need to do
- TR I R STD <pgd|0x7> 0.ffffffffffffffff
- to set the TableType to 0x1 & the Table length to 3.
- Tracing Program Exceptions
- --------------------------
- If you get a crash which says something like
- illegal operation or specification exception followed by a register dump
- You can restart linux & trace these using the tr prog <range or value> trace option.
- The most common ones you will normally be tracing for is
- 1=operation exception
- 2=privileged operation exception
- 4=protection exception
- 5=addressing exception
- 6=specification exception
- 10=segment translation exception
- 11=page translation exception
- The full list of these is on page 22 of the current s/390 Reference Summary.
- e.g.
- tr prog 10 will trace segment translation exceptions.
- tr prog on its own will trace all program interruption codes.
- Trace Sets
- ----------
- On starting VM you are initially in the INITIAL trace set.
- You can do a Q TR to verify this.
- If you have a complex tracing situation where you wish to wait for instance
- till a driver is open before you start tracing IO, but know in your
- heart that you are going to have to make several runs through the code till you
- have a clue whats going on.
- What you can do is
- TR I PSWA <Driver open address>
- hit b to continue till breakpoint
- reach the breakpoint
- now do your
- TR GOTO B
- TR IO 7c08-7c09 inst int run
- or whatever the IO channels you wish to trace are & hit b
- To got back to the initial trace set do
- TR GOTO INITIAL
- & the TR I PSWA <Driver open address> will be the only active breakpoint again.
- Tracing linux syscalls under VM
- -------------------------------
- Syscalls are implemented on Linux for S390 by the Supervisor call instruction (SVC) there 256
- possibilities of these as the instruction is made up of a 0xA opcode & the second byte being
- the syscall number. They are traced using the simple command.
- TR SVC <Optional value or range>
- the syscalls are defined in linux/include/asm-s390/unistd.h
- e.g. to trace all file opens just do
- TR SVC 5 ( as this is the syscall number of open )
- SMP Specific commands
- ---------------------
- To find out how many cpus you have
- Q CPUS displays all the CPU's available to your virtual machine
- To find the cpu that the current cpu VM debugger commands are being directed at do
- Q CPU to change the current cpu cpu VM debugger commands are being directed at do
- CPU <desired cpu no>
- On a SMP guest issue a command to all CPUs try prefixing the command with cpu all.
- To issue a command to a particular cpu try cpu <cpu number> e.g.
- CPU 01 TR I R 2000.3000
- If you are running on a guest with several cpus & you have a IO related problem
- & cannot follow the flow of code but you know it isnt smp related.
- from the bash prompt issue
- shutdown -h now or halt.
- do a Q CPUS to find out how many cpus you have
- detach each one of them from cp except cpu 0
- by issueing a
- DETACH CPU 01-(number of cpus in configuration)
- & boot linux again.
- TR SIGP will trace inter processor signal processor instructions.
- DEFINE CPU 01-(number in configuration)
- will get your guests cpus back.
- Help for displaying ascii textstrings
- -------------------------------------
- On the very latest VM Nucleus'es VM can now display ascii
- ( thanks Neale for the hint ) by doing
- D TX<lowaddr>.<len>
- e.g.
- D TX0.100
- Alternatively
- =============
- Under older VM debuggers ( I love EBDIC too ) you can use this little program I wrote which
- will convert a command line of hex digits to ascii text which can be compiled under linux &
- you can copy the hex digits from your x3270 terminal to your xterm if you are debugging
- from a linuxbox.
- This is quite useful when looking at a parameter passed in as a text string
- under VM ( unless you are good at decoding ASCII in your head ).
- e.g. consider tracing an open syscall
- TR SVC 5
- We have stopped at a breakpoint
- 000151B0' SVC 0A05 -> 0001909A' CC 0
- D 20.8 to check the SVC old psw in the prefix area & see was it from userspace
- ( for the layout of the prefix area consult P18 of the s/390 390 Reference Summary
- if you have it available ).
- V00000020 070C2000 800151B2
- The problem state bit wasn't set & it's also too early in the boot sequence
- for it to be a userspace SVC if it was we would have to temporarily switch the
- psw to user space addressing so we could get at the first parameter of the open in
- gpr2.
- Next do a
- D G2
- GPR 2 = 00014CB4
- Now display what gpr2 is pointing to
- D 00014CB4.20
- V00014CB4 2F646576 2F636F6E 736F6C65 00001BF5
- V00014CC4 FC00014C B4001001 E0001000 B8070707
- Now copy the text till the first 00 hex ( which is the end of the string
- to an xterm & do hex2ascii on it.
- hex2ascii 2F646576 2F636F6E 736F6C65 00
- outputs
- Decoded Hex:=/ d e v / c o n s o l e 0x00
- We were opening the console device,
- You can compile the code below yourself for practice :-),
- /*
- * hex2ascii.c
- * a useful little tool for converting a hexadecimal command line to ascii
- *
- * Author(s): Denis Joseph Barrow (djbarrow@de.ibm.com,barrow_dj@yahoo.com)
- * (C) 2000 IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH, IBM Corporation.
- */
- #include <stdio.h>
- int main(int argc,char *argv[])
- {
- int cnt1,cnt2,len,toggle=0;
- int startcnt=1;
- unsigned char c,hex;
-
- if(argc>1&&(strcmp(argv[1],"-a")==0))
- startcnt=2;
- printf("Decoded Hex:=");
- for(cnt1=startcnt;cnt1<argc;cnt1++)
- {
- len=strlen(argv[cnt1]);
- for(cnt2=0;cnt2<len;cnt2++)
- {
- c=argv[cnt1][cnt2];
- if(c>='0'&&c<='9')
- c=c-'0';
- if(c>='A'&&c<='F')
- c=c-'A'+10;
- if(c>='a'&&c<='F')
- c=c-'a'+10;
- switch(toggle)
- {
- case 0:
- hex=c<<4;
- toggle=1;
- break;
- case 1:
- hex+=c;
- if(hex<32||hex>127)
- {
- if(startcnt==1)
- printf("0x%02X ",(int)hex);
- else
- printf(".");
- }
- else
- {
- printf("%c",hex);
- if(startcnt==1)
- printf(" ");
- }
- toggle=0;
- break;
- }
- }
- }
- printf("n");
- }
- Stack tracing under VM
- ----------------------
- A basic backtrace
- -----------------
- Here are the tricks I use 9 out of 10 times it works pretty well,
- When your backchain reaches a dead end
- --------------------------------------
- This can happen when an exception happens in the kernel & the kernel is entered twice
- if you reach the NULL pointer at the end of the back chain you should be
- able to sniff further back if you follow the following tricks.
- 1) A kernel address should be easy to recognise since it is in
- primary space & the problem state bit isn't set & also
- The Hi bit of the address is set.
- 2) Another backchain should also be easy to recognise since it is an
- address pointing to another address approximately 100 bytes or 0x70 hex
- behind the current stackpointer.
- Here is some practice.
- boot the kernel & hit PA1 at some random time
- d g to display the gprs, this should display something like
- GPR 0 = 00000001 00156018 0014359C 00000000
- GPR 4 = 00000001 001B8888 000003E0 00000000
- GPR 8 = 00100080 00100084 00000000 000FE000
- GPR 12 = 00010400 8001B2DC 8001B36A 000FFED8
- Note that GPR14 is a return address but as we are real men we are going to
- trace the stack.
- display 0x40 bytes after the stack pointer.
- V000FFED8 000FFF38 8001B838 80014C8E 000FFF38
- V000FFEE8 00000000 00000000 000003E0 00000000
- V000FFEF8 00100080 00100084 00000000 000FE000
- V000FFF08 00010400 8001B2DC 8001B36A 000FFED8
- Ah now look at whats in sp+56 (sp+0x38) this is 8001B36A our saved r14 if
- you look above at our stackframe & also agrees with GPR14.
- now backchain
- d 000FFF38.40
- we now are taking the contents of SP to get our first backchain.
- V000FFF38 000FFFA0 00000000 00014995 00147094
- V000FFF48 00147090 001470A0 000003E0 00000000
- V000FFF58 00100080 00100084 00000000 001BF1D0
- V000FFF68 00010400 800149BA 80014CA6 000FFF38
- This displays a 2nd return address of 80014CA6
- now do d 000FFFA0.40 for our 3rd backchain
- V000FFFA0 04B52002 0001107F 00000000 00000000
- V000FFFB0 00000000 00000000 FF000000 0001107F
- V000FFFC0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
- V000FFFD0 00010400 80010802 8001085A 000FFFA0
- our 3rd return address is 8001085A
- as the 04B52002 looks suspiciously like rubbish it is fair to assume that the kernel entry routines
- for the sake of optimisation dont set up a backchain.
- now look at System.map to see if the addresses make any sense.
- grep -i 0001b3 System.map
- outputs among other things
- 0001b304 T cpu_idle
- so 8001B36A
- is cpu_idle+0x66 ( quiet the cpu is asleep, don't wake it )
- grep -i 00014 System.map
- produces among other things
- 00014a78 T start_kernel
- so 0014CA6 is start_kernel+some hex number I can't add in my head.
- grep -i 00108 System.map
- this produces
- 00010800 T _stext
- so 8001085A is _stext+0x5a
- Congrats you've done your first backchain.
- s/390 & z/Architecture IO Overview
- ==================================
- I am not going to give a course in 390 IO architecture as this would take me quite a
- while & I'm no expert. Instead I'll give a 390 IO architecture summary for Dummies if you have
- the s/390 principles of operation available read this instead. If nothing else you may find a few
- useful keywords in here & be able to use them on a web search engine like altavista to find
- more useful information.
- Unlike other bus architectures modern 390 systems do their IO using mostly
- fibre optics & devices such as tapes & disks can be shared between several mainframes,
- also S390 can support upto 65536 devices while a high end PC based system might be choking
- with around 64. Here is some of the common IO terminology
- Subchannel:
- This is the logical number most IO commands use to talk to an IO device there can be upto
- 0x10000 (65536) of these in a configuration typically there is a few hundred. Under VM
- for simplicity they are allocated contiguously, however on the native hardware they are not
- they typically stay consistent between boots provided no new hardware is inserted or removed.
- Under Linux for 390 we use these as IRQ's & also when issuing an IO command (CLEAR SUBCHANNEL,
- HALT SUBCHANNEL,MODIFY SUBCHANNEL,RESUME SUBCHANNEL,START SUBCHANNEL,STORE SUBCHANNEL &
- TEST SUBCHANNEL ) we use this as the ID of the device we wish to talk to, the most
- important of these instructions are START SUBCHANNEL ( to start IO ), TEST SUBCHANNEL ( to check
- whether the IO completed successfully ), & HALT SUBCHANNEL ( to kill IO ), a subchannel
- can have up to 8 channel paths to a device this offers redunancy if one is not available.
- Device Number:
- This number remains static & Is closely tied to the hardware, there are 65536 of these
- also they are made up of a CHPID ( Channel Path ID, the most significant 8 bits )
- & another lsb 8 bits. These remain static even if more devices are inserted or removed
- from the hardware, there is a 1 to 1 mapping between Subchannels & Device Numbers provided
- devices arent inserted or removed.
- Channel Control Words:
- CCWS are linked lists of instructions initially pointed to by an operation request block (ORB),
- which is initially given to Start Subchannel (SSCH) command along with the subchannel number
- for the IO subsystem to process while the CPU continues executing normal code.
- These come in two flavours, Format 0 ( 24 bit for backward )
- compatibility & Format 1 ( 31 bit ). These are typically used to issue read & write
- ( & many other instructions ) they consist of a length field & an absolute address field.
- For each IO typically get 1 or 2 interrupts one for channel end ( primary status ) when the
- channel is idle & the second for device end ( secondary status ) sometimes you get both
- concurrently, you check how the IO went on by issueing a TEST SUBCHANNEL at each interrupt,
- from which you receive an Interruption response block (IRB). If you get channel & device end
- status in the IRB without channel checks etc. your IO probably went okay. If you didn't you
- probably need a doctorto examine the IRB & extended status word etc.
- If an error occurs more sophistocated control units have a facitity known as
- concurrent sense this means that if an error occurs Extended sense information will
- be presented in the Extended status word in the IRB if not you have to issue a
- subsequent SENSE CCW command after the test subchannel.
- TPI( Test pending interrupt) can also be used for polled IO but in multitasking multiprocessor
- systems it isn't recommended except for checking special cases ( i.e. non looping checks for
- pending IO etc. ).
- Store Subchannel & Modify Subchannel can be used to examine & modify operating characteristics
- of a subchannel ( e.g. channel paths ).
- Other IO related Terms:
- Sysplex: S390's Clustering Technology
- QDIO: S390's new high speed IO architecture to support devices such as gigabit ethernet,
- this architecture is also designed to be forward compatible with up & coming 64 bit machines.
- General Concepts
- Input Output Processors (IOP's) are responsible for communicating between
- the mainframe CPU's & the channel & relieve the mainframe CPU's from the
- burden of communicating with IO devices directly, this allows the CPU's to
- concentrate on data processing.
- IOP's can use one or more links ( known as channel paths ) to talk to each
- IO device. It first checks for path availability & chooses an available one,
- then starts ( & sometimes terminates IO ).
- There are two types of channel path ESCON & the Paralell IO interface.
- IO devices are attached to control units, control units provide the
- logic to interface the channel paths & channel path IO protocols to
- the IO devices, they can be integrated with the devices or housed separately
- & often talk to several similar devices ( typical examples would be raid
- controllers or a control unit which connects to 1000 3270 terminals ).
- +---------------------------------------------------------------+
- | +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +----------+ +----------+ |
- | | CPU | | CPU | | CPU | | CPU | | Main | | Expanded | |
- | | | | | | | | | | Memory | | Storage | |
- | +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +----------+ +----------+ |
- |---------------------------------------------------------------+
- | IOP | IOP | IOP |
- |---------------------------------------------------------------
- | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C |
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
- || ||
- || Bus & Tag Channel Path || ESCON
- || ====================== || Channel
- || || || || Path
- +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
- | | | | | |
- | CU | | CU | | CU |
- | | | | | |
- +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
- | | | | |
- +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
- |I/O Device| |I/O Device| |I/O Device| |I/O Device| |I/O Device|
- +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
- CPU = Central Processing Unit
- C = Channel
- IOP = IP Processor
- CU = Control Unit
- The 390 IO systems come in 2 flavours the current 390 machines support both
- The Older 360 & 370 Interface,sometimes called the paralell I/O interface,
- sometimes called Bus-and Tag & sometimes Original Equipment Manufacturers
- Interface (OEMI).
- This byte wide paralell channel path/bus has parity & data on the "Bus" cable
- & control lines on the "Tag" cable. These can operate in byte multiplex mode for
- sharing between several slow devices or burst mode & monopolize the channel for the
- whole burst. Upto 256 devices can be addressed on one of these cables. These cables are
- about one inch in diameter. The maximum unextended length supported by these cables is
- 125 Meters but this can be extended up to 2km with a fibre optic channel extended
- such as a 3044. The maximum burst speed supported is 4.5 megabytes per second however
- some really old processors support only transfer rates of 3.0, 2.0 & 1.0 MB/sec.
- One of these paths can be daisy chained to up to 8 control units.
- ESCON if fibre optic it is also called FICON
- Was introduced by IBM in 1990. Has 2 fibre optic cables & uses either leds or lasers
- for communication at a signaling rate of upto 200 megabits/sec. As 10bits are transferred
- for every 8 bits info this drops to 160 megabits/sec & to 18.6 Megabytes/sec once
- control info & CRC are added. ESCON only operates in burst mode.
-
- ESCONs typical max cable length is 3km for the led version & 20km for the laser version
- known as XDF ( extended distance facility ). This can be further extended by using an
- ESCON director which triples the above mentioned ranges. Unlike Bus & Tag as ESCON is
- serial it uses a packet switching architecture the standard Bus & Tag control protocol
- is however present within the packets. Upto 256 devices can be attached to each control
- unit that uses one of these interfaces.
- Common 390 Devices include:
- Network adapters typically OSA2,3172's,2116's & OSA-E gigabit ethernet adapters,
- Consoles 3270 & 3215 ( a teletype emulated under linux for a line mode console ).
- DASD's direct access storage devices ( otherwise known as hard disks ).
- Tape Drives.
- CTC ( Channel to Channel Adapters ),
- ESCON or Paralell Cables used as a very high speed serial link
- between 2 machines. We use 2 cables under linux to do a bi-directional serial link.
- Debugging IO on s/390 & z/Architecture under VM
- ===============================================
- Now we are ready to go on with IO tracing commands under VM
- A few self explanatory queries:
- Q OSA
- Q CTC
- Q DISK ( This command is CMS specific )
- Q DASD
- Q OSA on my machine returns
- OSA 7C08 ON OSA 7C08 SUBCHANNEL = 0000
- OSA 7C09 ON OSA 7C09 SUBCHANNEL = 0001
- OSA 7C14 ON OSA 7C14 SUBCHANNEL = 0002
- OSA 7C15 ON OSA 7C15 SUBCHANNEL = 0003
- If you have a guest with certain priviliges you may be able to see devices
- which don't belong to you to avoid this do add the option V.
- e.g.
- Q V OSA
- Now using the device numbers returned by this command we will
- Trace the io starting up on the first device 7c08 & 7c09
- In our simplest case we can trace the
- start subchannels
- like TR SSCH 7C08-7C09
- or the halt subchannels
- or TR HSCH 7C08-7C09
- MSCH's ,STSCH's I think you can guess the rest
- Ingo's favourite trick is tracing all the IO's & CCWS & spooling them into the reader of another
- VM guest so he can ftp the logfile back to his own machine.I'll do a small bit of this & give you
- a look at the output.
- 1) Spool stdout to VM reader
- SP PRT TO (another vm guest ) or * for the local vm guest
- 2) Fill the reader with the trace
- TR IO 7c08-7c09 INST INT CCW PRT RUN
- 3) Start up linux
- i 00c
- 4) Finish the trace
- TR END
- 5) close the reader
- C PRT
- 6) list reader contents
- RDRLIST
- 7) copy it to linux4's minidisk
- RECEIVE / LOG TXT A1 ( replace
- 8)
- filel & press F11 to look at it
- You should see someting like.
- 00020942' SSCH B2334000 0048813C CC 0 SCH 0000 DEV 7C08
- CPA 000FFDF0 PARM 00E2C9C4 KEY 0 FPI C0 LPM 80
- CCW 000FFDF0 E4200100 00487FE8 0000 E4240100 ........
- IDAL 43D8AFE8
- IDAL 0FB76000
- 00020B0A' I/O DEV 7C08 -> 000197BC' SCH 0000 PARM 00E2C9C4
- 00021628' TSCH B2354000 >> 00488164 CC 0 SCH 0000 DEV 7C08
- CCWA 000FFDF8 DEV STS 0C SCH STS 00 CNT 00EC
- KEY 0 FPI C0 CC 0 CTLS 4007
- 00022238' STSCH B2344000 >> 00488108 CC 0 SCH 0000 DEV 7C08
- If you don't like messing up your readed ( because you possibly booted from it )
- you can alternatively spool it to another readers guest.
- Other common VM device related commands
- ---------------------------------------------
- These commands are listed only because they have
- been of use to me in the past & may be of use to
- you too. For more complete info on each of the commands
- use type HELP <command> from CMS.
- detaching devices
- DET <devno range>
- ATT <devno range> <guest>
- attach a device to guest * for your own guest
- READY <devno> cause VM to issue a fake interrupt.
- The VARY command is normally only available to VM administrators.
- VARY ON PATH <path> TO <devno range>
- VARY OFF PATH <PATH> FROM <devno range>
- This is used to switch on or off channel paths to devices.
- Q CHPID <channel path ID>
- This displays state of devices using this channel path
- D SCHIB <subchannel>
- This displays the subchannel information SCHIB block for the device.
- this I believe is also only available to administrators.
- DEFINE CTC <devno>
- defines a virtual CTC channel to channel connection
- 2 need to be defined on each guest for the CTC driver to use.
- COUPLE devno userid remote devno
- Joins a local virtual device to a remote virtual device
- ( commonly used for the CTC driver ).
- Building a VM ramdisk under CMS which linux can use
- def vfb-<blocksize> <subchannel> <number blocks>
- blocksize is commonly 4096 for linux.
- Formatting it
- format <subchannel> <driver letter e.g. x> (blksize <blocksize>
- Sharing a disk between multiple guests
- LINK userid devno1 devno2 mode password
- GDB on S390
- ===========
- N.B. if compiling for debugging gdb works better without optimisation
- ( see Compiling programs for debugging )
- invocation
- ----------
- gdb <victim program> <optional corefile>
- Online help
- -----------
- help: gives help on commands
- e.g.
- help
- help display
- Note gdb's online help is very good use it.
- Assembly
- --------
- info registers: displays registers other than floating point.
- info all-registers: displays floating points as well.
- disassemble: dissassembles
- e.g.
- disassemble without parameters will disassemble the current function
- disassemble $pc $pc+10
- Viewing & modifying variables
- -----------------------------
- print or p: displays variable or register
- e.g. p/x $sp will display the stack pointer
- display: prints variable or register each time program stops
- e.g.
- display/x $pc will display the program counter
- display argc
- undisplay : undo's display's
- info breakpoints: shows all current breakpoints
- info stack: shows stack back trace ( if this dosent work too well, I'll show you the
- stacktrace by hand below ).
- info locals: displays local variables.
- info args: display current procedure arguments.
- set args: will set argc & argv each time the victim program is invoked.
- set <variable>=value
- set argc=100
- set $pc=0
- Modifying execution
- -------------------
- step: steps n lines of sourcecode
- step steps 1 line.
- step 100 steps 100 lines of code.
- next: like step except this will not step into subroutines
- stepi: steps a single machine code instruction.
- e.g. stepi 100
- nexti: steps a single machine code instruction but will not step into subroutines.
- finish: will run until exit of the current routine
- run: (re)starts a program
- cont: continues a program
- quit: exits gdb.
- breakpoints
- ------------
- break
- sets a breakpoint
- e.g.
- break main
- break *$pc
- break *0x400618
- heres a really useful one for large programs
- rbr
- Set a breakpoint for all functions matching REGEXP
- e.g.
- rbr 390
- will set a breakpoint with all functions with 390 in their name.
- info breakpoints
- lists all breakpoints
- delete: delete breakpoint by number or delete them all
- e.g.
- delete 1 will delete the first breakpoint
- delete will delete them all
- watch: This will set a watchpoint ( usually hardware assisted ),
- This will watch a variable till it changes
- e.g.
- watch cnt, will watch the variable cnt till it changes.
- As an aside unfortunately gdb's, architecture independent watchpoint code
- is inconsistent & not very good, watchpoints usually work but not always.
- info watchpoints: Display currently active watchpoints
- condition: ( another useful one )
- Specify breakpoint number N to break only if COND is true.
- Usage is `condition N COND', where N is an integer and COND is an
- expression to be evaluated whenever breakpoint N is reached.
- User defined functions/macros
- -----------------------------
- define: ( Note this is very very useful,simple & powerful )
- usage define <name> <list of commands> end
- examples which you should consider putting into .gdbinit in your home directory
- define d
- stepi
- disassemble $pc $pc+10
- end
- define e
- nexti
- disassemble $pc $pc+10
- end
- Other hard to classify stuff
- ----------------------------
- signal n:
- sends the victim program a signal.
- e.g. signal 3 will send a SIGQUIT.
- info signals:
- what gdb does when the victim receives certain signals.
- list:
- e.g.
- list lists current function source
- list 1,10 list first 10 lines of curret file.
- list test.c:1,10
- directory:
- Adds directories to be searched for source if gdb cannot find the source.
- (note it is a bit sensititive about slashes )
- e.g. To add the root of the filesystem to the searchpath do
- directory //
- call <function>
- This calls a function in the victim program, this is pretty powerful
- e.g.
- (gdb) call printf("hello world")
- outputs:
- $1 = 11
- You might now be thinking that the line above didn't work, something extra had to be done.
- (gdb) call fflush(stdout)
- hello world$2 = 0
- As an aside the debugger also calls malloc & free under the hood
- to make space for the "hello world" string.
- hints
- -----
- 1) command completion works just like bash
- ( if you are a bad typist like me this really helps )
- e.g. hit br <TAB> & cursor up & down :-).
- 2) if you have a debugging problem that takes a few steps to recreate
- put the steps into a file called .gdbinit in your current working directory
- if you have defined a few extra useful user defined commands put these in
- your home directory & they will be read each time gdb is launched.
- A typical .gdbinit file might be.
- break main
- run
- break runtime_exception
- cont
- stack chaining in gdb by hand
- -----------------------------
- This is done using a the same trick described for VM
- p/x (*($sp+56))&0x7fffffff get the first backchain.
- For z/Architecture
- Replace 56 with 112 & ignore the &0x7fffffff
- in the macros below & do nasty casts to longs like the following
- as gdb unfortunately deals with printed arguments as ints which
- messes up everything.
- i.e. here is a 3rd backchain dereference
- p/x *(long *)(***(long ***)$sp+112)
- this outputs
- $5 = 0x528f18
- on my machine.
- Now you can use
- info symbol (*($sp+56))&0x7fffffff
- you might see something like.
- rl_getc + 36 in section .text telling you what is located at address 0x528f18
- Now do.
- p/x (*(*$sp+56))&0x7fffffff
- This outputs
- $6 = 0x528ed0
- Now do.
- info symbol (*(*$sp+56))&0x7fffffff
- rl_read_key + 180 in section .text
- now do
- p/x (*(**$sp+56))&0x7fffffff
- & so on.
- Another good trick to look at addresses on the stack if you've somehow lost
- the backchain is.
- x/500xa $sp
- This displays anything the name of any known functions above the stack pointer
- for 500 bytes.
- Disassembling instructions without debug info
- ---------------------------------------------
- gdb typically compains if there is a lack of debugging
- symbols in the disassemble command with
- "No function contains specified address." to get around
- this do
- x/<number lines to disassemble>xi <address>
- e.g.
- x/20xi 0x400730
- Note: Remember gdb has history just like bash you don't need to retype the
- whole line just use the up & down arrows.
- For more info
- -------------
- From your linuxbox do
- man gdb or info gdb.
- core dumps
- ----------
- What a core dump ?,
- A core dump is a file generated by the kernel ( if allowed ) which contains the registers,
- & all active pages of the program which has crashed.
- From this file gdb will allow you to look at the registers & stack trace & memory of the
- program as if it just crashed on your system, it is usually called core & created in the
- current working directory.
- This is very useful in that a customer can mail a core dump to a technical support department
- & the technical support department can reconstruct what happened.
- Provided the have an indentical copy of this program with debugging symbols compiled in &
- the source base of this build is available.
- In short it is far more useful than something like a crash log could ever hope to be.
- In theory all that is missing to restart a core dumped program is a kernel patch which
- will do the following.
- 1) Make a new kernel task structure
- 2) Reload all the dumped pages back into the kernels memory managment structures.
- 3) Do the required clock fixups
- 4) Get all files & network connections for the process back into an identical state ( really difficult ).
- 5) A few more difficult things I haven't thought of.
- Why have I never seen one ?.
- Probably because you haven't used the command
- ulimit -c unlimited in bash
- to allow core dumps, now do
- ulimit -a
- to verify that the limit was accepted.
- A sample core dump
- To create this I'm going to do
- ulimit -c unlimited
- gdb
- to launch gdb (my victim app. ) now be bad & do the following from another
- telnet/xterm session to the same machine
- ps -aux | grep gdb
- kill -SIGSEGV <gdb's pid>
- or alternatively use killall -SIGSEGV gdb if you have the killall command.
- Now look at the core dump.
- ./gdb ./gdb core
- Displays the following
- GNU gdb 4.18
- Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
- GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
- welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
- Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
- There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
- This GDB was configured as "s390-ibm-linux"...
- Core was generated by `./gdb'.
- Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
- Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libncurses.so.4...done.
- Reading symbols from /lib/libm.so.6...done.
- Reading symbols from /lib/libc.so.6...done.
- Reading symbols from /lib/ld-linux.so.2...done.
- #0 0x40126d1a in read () from /lib/libc.so.6
- Setting up the environment for debugging gdb.
- Breakpoint 1 at 0x4dc6f8: file utils.c, line 471.
- Breakpoint 2 at 0x4d87a4: file top.c, line 2609.
- (top-gdb) info stack
- #0 0x40126d1a in read () from /lib/libc.so.6
- #1 0x528f26 in rl_getc (stream=0x7ffffde8) at input.c:402
- #2 0x528ed0 in rl_read_key () at input.c:381
- #3 0x5167e6 in readline_internal_char () at readline.c:454
- #4 0x5168ee in readline_internal_charloop () at readline.c:507
- #5 0x51692c in readline_internal () at readline.c:521
- #6 0x5164fe in readline (prompt=0x7ffff810 "177