Linux Kernel Debugging

Your kernel just oopsed - What do you do, hotshot?

Muli Ben-Yehuda
[email protected]

IBM Haifa Research Lab

Kernel Debugging, IBM HRL LKDSG 2003 p.1/21

Kernel Debugging - Why?

Why would we want to debug the kernel? after all, its the one part of the system that we never have to worry about, because it always works. Well, no.

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Kernel Debugging - Why?(cont)

Because a driver is not working as well as it should, or is not working at all. Because we have a school or work project. Because the kernel is crashing, and we dont know why. Because we want to learn how the kernel works. Because its fun! Real men hack kernels ;-)

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Broad Overview of the Kernel

Over a million lines of code. Documentation/ drivers/ kernel/ arch/ fs/ lib/ mm/ net/ Others: security/ include/ sound/ init/ usr/ crypto/ ipc/

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Broad Kernel Overview (cont)

Supports runtime loading and unloading of additional code (kernel modules). Congured using Kcong, a domain specifc conguration language. Built using kbuild, a collection of complex Makeles. Heavily dependant on gcc and gccisms. Does not use or link with user space libraries, although supplies many of them - sprintf, memcpy, strlen, printk (not printf!).

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Read the Source, Luke

The source is there - use it to gure out whats going on. Linux kernel developers frown upon binary only modules, because they dont have the source and thus cannot debug them. Later kernels include facilities to mark when a binary only module has been loaded (tainted kernels). Kernel developers will kindly refuse to help debug a problem when a kernel has been tainted.

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Read the Source, Luke (cont)

Use the right tools for the job. Tools to navigate the source include:

lxr - http://www.iglu.org.il/lxr/ nd and grep ctags, etags, gtags and their ilk.

Use a good IDE

emacs vi One brave soul I heard about used MS Visual Studio!

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Use the source

The two oldest and most useful debugging aids are

Your brain. printf.

Use them! the kernel gives you printk, which

Can be called from interrupt context. Behaves mostly like printf, except that it doesnt support oating point.

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Use the Source (cont)

Use something like this snippet to turn printks on and off depending on whether youre building a debug or relase build.
#ifdef DEBUG_FOO #define CDBG(msg, args...) do { \ printk(KERN_DEBUG "[%s] " msg , __func__ , ##args );\ } while (0) #else /* !defined(DEBUG_FOO) */ #define CDBG(msg, args...) do {} while (0) #endif /* !defined(DEBUG_FOO) */

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Use the Source (cont)

For really tough bugs, write code to solve bugs. Dont be afraid to insert new kernel modules to monitor or affect your primary development focus. Code defensively. Whenever you suspect memory overwrites or use after free, use memory poisoning. Enable all of the kernel debug options - they will nd your bugs for you!
#define assert(x) do { if (!(x)) BUG(); } while (0)

Linux 2.5 has BUG_ON().

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Kernel Debuggers
Linux has several kernel debuggers, none of which are in the main tree (for the time being). The two most common are

kdb - http://oss.sgi.com/projects/kdb kgdb - http://kgdb.sourceforge.net/

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KGDB

Requires two machines, a slave and a master. gdb runs on the master, controlling a gdb stub in the slave kernel via the serial port. When an OOPS or a panic occurs, you drop into the debugger. Very very useful for the situations where you dump core in an interrupt handler and no oops data makes it to disk - you drop into the debugger with the correct backtrace.

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ksymoops

Read Documentation/oops-tracing.txt Install ksymoops, available from ftp://ftp.il.kernel.org Run it on the oops (get it from the logs, serial console, or copy from the screen). ksymoops gives you a human readable back trace. Sometimes the oops data can be trusted ("easy" bugs like a NULL pointer dereference) and sometimes its no more than a general hint to what is going wrong (memory corruption overwrite EIP).

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ksymoops(cont)

Linux 2.5 includes an "in kernel" oops tracer, called kksymoops. Dont forget to enable it when compiling your new 2.5 kernel! It can be found under Kernel Hacking -> Load all symbols for debugging/kksymoops (CONFIG_KALLSYMS).

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ksymoops(cont)

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual addres printing eip: c014a9cc *pde = 00000000 Oops: 0002 CPU: 0 EIP: 0060:[<c014a9cc>] Not tainted EFLAGS: 00010202 EIP is at sys_open+0x2c/0x90 eax: 00000001 ebx: 00000001 ecx: ffffffff edx: 00000000 esi: bffffaec edi: ce07e000 ebp: cdbcffbc esp: cdbcffb0 ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068 Process cat (pid: 862, threadinfo=cdbce000 task=cdcf7380) Stack: bffffaec 40013020 bffff9b4 cdbce000 c010adc7 bffffaec 00008 40013020 bffff9b4 bffff868 00000005 0000007b 0000007b 00000 00000073 00000246 bffff848 0000007b Call Trace: [<c010adc7>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb Code: 89 1d 00 00 00 00 e8 59 fc ff ff 89 c6 85 f6 78 2f 8b 4d 10

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LKCD

LKCD - Linux Kernel Crash Dump http://lkcd.sf.net Saves a dump of the systems state at the time the dump occurs. A dump occurs when the kernel panics or oopses, or when requested by the administrator. Must be congured before the crash occurs!

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Making sense of kernel data

System.map - kernel function addresses /proc/kcore - image of system memory vmlinux - the uncompressed kernel, can be disassembled using objdump(1).

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User Mode Linux

For some kinds of kernel development (architecture independent, le systems, memory management), using UML is a life saver. Allows you to run the Linux kernel in user space, and debug it with gdb. Work is underway at making valgrind work on UML, which is expected to nd many bugs.

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Magic SysRq

More info at Documentation/sysrq.txt. a magical key combo you can hit which the kernel will respond to regardless of whatever else it is doing, unless it is completely locked up. CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ, echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq On x86, press ALT-SysRq-<command key>. The sysrq key is also known as the Print Screen key.

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Magic SysRq(cont)

b - Will immediately reboot the system without syncing or unmounting your disks. o - Will shut your system off (if congured and supported). s - Will attempt to sync all mounted lesystems. p - Will dump the current registers and ags to your console. t - Will dump a list of current tasks and their information to your console. m - Will dump current memory info to your console. h - The most important key - will display help ;-)

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Happy Hacking!
Questions? Comments? Happy Oopsing!

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