KGDB Documentation

Using KGDB — Day-to-Day Workflow Once KGDB is set up (see Getting Started), the day-to-day debugging workflow involves standard GDB commands applied to the running kernel. This guide covers the patterns that are most useful for kernel-level work, which differ in important ways from typical userspace debugging. Triggering a debug session There are three common … Read more

  Troubleshooting   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB Connection problems gdb prints following errors on giving command target remote. Ingore packet error, continuing… Ingore packet error, continuing… Ingore packet error, continuing… Couldn’t establish connection to remote target Malform response to offset query, timeout. Check whether the serial line … Read more

KGDB — PowerPC Architecture Support KGDB on PowerPC provided kernel source-level debugging on IBM POWER, Freescale (now NXP) PowerPC, and AMCC/Applied Micro PowerPC platforms. PowerPC was a dominant architecture for embedded networking equipment, set-top boxes, and certain server platforms during the 2004-2011 era when KGDB was actively maintained. Supported PowerPC variants 32-bit PowerPC (PPC32) — … Read more

  Debugging on x86_64   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB This KGDB patch has been tested on a dual CPU opteron machine. All kgdb features including thread support and console messages through gdb were tested and found to work. x86_64 gdb cannot show stack trace correctly beyond do_IRQ … Read more

  Loading a module   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB A module can be loaded as usual with insmod or modprobe commands. GDB automatically detects that a module has been loaded and loads the module object file into its memory for getting debugging information. To let GDB know … Read more

  Inline functions   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB Information printed in a GDB backtrace is usually sufficient to find out what a function call hierarchy is at the point where the execution stopped. It may not be enough when one of the stack frames is inside an … Read more

  Frequently Asked Questions   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB After i apply the KGDB patches to kernel, complie and boot with the new image, my machine appears to hang up. Whats wrong? KGDB for Linux 2.6.8-rc1 onwards uses early_param to pass the control to KGDB code in … Read more

  Preparing a kernel   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB To prepare a kernel for testing, apply a KGDB patch to a linux kernel source. Then enable Remote (serial) kernel debugging with GDB from kernel hacking, which will enable KGDB code in the kernel.This will enable choice of … Read more

  Features   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB KGDB Version 2  Early Param:  KGDB for Linux 2.6.8-rc1 onwards uses early_param to wait for connection from remote GDB much earlier than previous versions of KGDB. GDB detach and reattach:  It’s possible to detach GDB from a running kernel and … Read more

  Introduction   Home   Introduction   Getting KGDB   Using KGDB   Credits   Miscellaneous   Troubleshooting   FAQ   Support   About KGDB What’s New KGDB Features Quick Start KGDB is a source level debugger for linux kernel. It is used along with gdb to debug linux kernel. Kernel developers can debug a kernel similar to application programs with use of KGDB. It … Read more