Using the

GNU Debugger (GDB)
Pranav Peshwe
Techzemplary
Pvt.Ltd
February 24th 2008
Some background about GDB...
● Started by RMS in 1986
● Ported to all major OSes thereafter
● Has support for almost all popular architectures
● Supports symbolic debugging
● Primarily used for debugging C/C++
● Supports remote debugging
● Work being done on bringing in 'Reversible debugging'
 Getting ready...
● Compiling with debug information
● Side effects of debug information
● Readying multi-file projects for debugging
● Nifty utililies – file, nm, objdump, strip etc
 A typical debug workflow
● Run
● Backtrace
● Break
● Step
● Inspect
● Change
● Continue
 Preliminary usage
● The GDB executable - /usr/bin/gdb
● To start – gdb [program-name]
● To quit – quit
● Select a program to run – file <prog-name>
● Run a program in gdb - run
● Kill a prog in gdb – kill <prog-name>
● Getting help – GDB manual and online help
 Zeroing on the function
●
Backtracing ­ bt
●
Moving between frames – up, down and frame
●
Viewing arguments' addresses – info args
●
Other information about the frame – info frame
 Looking at the source
●
Specifying the source file(s) – directory

●
Listing the source – the many variants of list

●
Searching the source – search
 Breaking into the code
●
Breakpoint on a function – b func_name, continue
●
Breakpoint on a source line – b [filename:]line_no
●
Listing current breakpoints – info b
●
Break only the first time – tbreak
●
Ignore, disable and delete breakpoints
● Watchpoints
Moving ahead...one step at a time
●
Single stepping – step, next
●
'finish'ing a function
●
Forcing a return
 Inspecting data
● Global variables – info variables
● Local variables – info locals
● Examining values of variables – print
● Viewing arrays
● Automatic display
 Inspecting data contd...
● Examining memory - x
● Viewing registers – info registers
● Listing functions
● Listing variables in scope of a function
 On­site debugging ??
● Get the pid of the process
● Attach to a running process – attach <pid>
● Loading symbol table from an external file
● Detach from a running process – detach
 Miscellaneous stuff
● Getting runtime information
● Redirecting output
● Logging
● Shell commands
● Graphical front-ends to GDB
● Delta debugging B)
 END OF PART I

Questions welcome...