Debugging Kernel Problems

by Greg Lehey
Edition for AsiaBSDCon 2004 Taipei, 13 March 2004

Debugging Kernel Problems

by Greg Lehey ([email protected]) Copyright 1995-2004 Greg Lehey

Debugging Kernel Problems

Preface
Debugging kernel problems is a black art. Not many people do it, and documentation is rare, inaccurate and incomplete. This document is no exception: faced with the choice of accuracy and completeness, I chose to attempt the latter. As usual, time was the limiting factor, and this draft is still in beta status. This is a typical situation for the whole topic of kernel debugging: building debug tools and documentation is expensive, and the people who write them are also the people who use them, so theres a tendency to build as much of the tool as necessary to do the job at hand. If the tool is well-written, it will be reusable by the next person who looks at a particular area; if not, it might fall into disuse. Consider this book a starting point for your own development of debugging tools, and remember: more than anywhere else, this is an area with some assembly required.

Debugging Kernel Problems

1
Introduction
Operating systems fail. All operating systems contain bugs, and they will sometimes cause the system to behave incorrectly. The BSD kernels are no exception. Compared to most other operating systems, both free and commercial, the BSD kernels offer a large number of debugging tools. This tutorial examines the options available both to the experienced end user and also to the developer. In this tutorial, well look at the following topics:

How and why kernels fail. Understanding log les: dmesg and the les in /var/log, notably /var/log/messages. Userland tools for debugging a running system. Building a kernel with debugging support: the options. Using a serial console. Preparing for dumps: dumpon, savecore. Demonstration: panicing and dumping a system. The assembler-level view of a C program. Preliminary dump analysis. Reading code. Introduction to the kernel source tree. Analysing panic dumps with gdb. On-line kernel debuggers: ddb, remote serial gdb. Debugging a running system with ddb. Debugging a running system with gdb.

Debugging Kernel Problems

Debug options in the kernel: INVARIANTS and friends. Debug options in the kernel: WITNESS. Code-based assistance: KTR.

How and why kernels fail

Good kernels should not fail. They must protect themselves against a number of external inuences, including hardware failure, both deliberately and accidentally badly written user programs, and kernel programming errors. In some cases, of course, there is no way a kernel can recover, for example if the only processor fails. On the other hand, a good kernel should be able to protect itself from badly written user programs. A kernel can fail in a number of ways:

It can stop reacting to the outside world. This is called a hang. It can destroy itself (overwriting code). Its almost impossible to distinguish this state from a
hang unless you have tools which can examine the machine state independently of the kernel.

It can detect an inconsistency, report it and stop. In UNIX terminology, this is a panic . It can continue running incorrectly. For example, it might corrupt data on disk or breach network protocols. By far the easiest kind of failure to diagnose is a panic. There are two basic types:

Failed consistency checks result in a specic panic:

panic: Free vnode isnt

Exception conditions result in a less specic panic:

panic: Page fault in kernel mode The other cases can be very difcult to catch at the right moment.

Debugging Kernel Problems

2
Userland tools
dmesg
In normal operation, a kernel will sometimes write messages to the outside world via the console, /dev/console. Internally it writes via a circular buffer called msgbuf. The dmesg program can show the current contents of msgbuf. The most important use is at startup time for diagnosing conguration problems:
# dmesg Copyright (c) 1992-2002 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD 4.5-PRERELEASE #3: Sat Jan 5 13:25:02 CST 2002 [email protected]:/src/FreeBSD/4-STABLE-ECHUNGA/src/sys/compile/ECHUNGA Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz Timecounter "TSC" frequency 751708714 Hz CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor (751.71-MHz 686-class CPU) Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x621 Stepping = 1 Features=0x183f9ff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE3 6,MMX,FXSR> AMD Features=0xc0400000<AMIE,DSP,3DNow!> ... pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x1039, dev=0x0009) at 1.1 ... cd1 at ahc0 bus 0 target 1 lun 0 cd1: <TEAC CD-ROM CD-532S 1.0A> Removable CD-ROM SCSI-2 device cd1: 20.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 15) cd1: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present ... WARNING: / was not properly unmounted

Much of this information is informative, but occasionally you get messages indicating some problem. The last line in the previous example shows that the system did not shut down properly: either it crashed, or the power failed. During normal operation you might see messages like the following:
sio1: 1 more silo overflow (total 1607)

7
sio1: 1 more silo overflow (total 1608) nfsd send error 64 ... nfs server wantadilla:/src: not responding nfs server wantadilla:/: not responding nfs server wantadilla:/src: is alive again nfs server wantadilla:/: is alive again arp info overwritten for 192.109.197.82 by 00:00:21:ca:6e:f1

Debugging Kernel Problems

In the course of time, the message buffer wraps around and the old contents are lost. For this reason, FreeBSD and NetBSD print the dmesg contents after boot to the le /var/run/dmesg.boot for later reference. In addition, the output is piped to syslogd, the system log daemon, which by default writes it to /var/log/messages. During kernel debugging you can print msgbuf. For FreeBSD, enter:
(gdb) printf "%s", (char *)msgbufp->msg_ptr

For NetBSD or OpenBSD, enter:

(gdb) printf "%s", (char *) msgbufp->msg_bufc

Log les
BSD systems keep track of signicant events in log les. They can be of great use for debugging. Most of them are kept in /var/log, though this is not a requirement. Many of them are maintained by syslogd, but there is no requirement for a special program. The only requirement is to avoid having two programs maintaining the same le.

syslogd
syslogd is a standard daemon which maintains a number of the les in /var/log. You should always run syslogd unless you have a very good reason not to. Processes normally write to syslogd with the library function syslog:
#include <syslog.h> #include <stdarg.h> void syslog (int priority, const char *message, ...);

syslog is used in a similar manner to printf; only the rst parameter is different. Although its called priority in the man page, its divided into two parts:

The level eld describes how serious the message is. It ranges from LOG_DEBUG (information normally suppressed and only produced for debug purposes) to LOG_EMERG (machine about to self-destruct).

The facility eld describes what part of the system generated the message.
The priority eld can be represented in text form as facility.level. For example, error messages from the mail subsystem are called mail.err. In FreeBSD, as the result of security concerns, syslogd is started with the -s ag by default.

Debugging Kernel Problems

This stops syslogd from accepting remote messages. If you specify the -ss ag, as suggested in the comment, you will also not be able to log to remote systems. Depending on your conguration, its worth changing this default. For example, you might want all systems in example.org to log to gw. That way you get one set of log les for the entire network.

/etc/syslog.conf/
syslogd reads the le /etc/syslog.conf, which species where to log messages based on their message priority. Heres a slightly modied example:
# $FreeBSD: src/etc/syslog.conf,v 1.13 2000/02/08 21:57:28 rwatson Exp $ # # Spaces are NOT valid field separators in this file. # Consult the syslog.conf(5) manpage. *.* @echunga log everything to system echunga *.err;kern.debug;auth.notice;mail.crit /dev/console log specied messages to console *.notice;kern.debug;lpr.info;mail.crit /var/log/messages log messages to le security.* /var/log/security specic subsystems mail.info /var/log/maillog get their own les lpr.info /var/log/lpd-errs cron.* /var/log/cron *.err root inform logged-in root user of errors *.notice;news.err root *.alert root *.emerg * # uncomment this to enable logging of all log messages to /var/log/all.log #*.* /var/log/all.log # uncomment this to enable logging to a remote loghost named loghost #*.* @loghost # uncomment these if youre running inn # news.crit /var/log/news/news.crit # news.err /var/log/news/news.err # news.notice /var/log/news/news.notice !startslip all messages from startslip *.* /var/log/slip.log !ppp all messages from ppp *.* /var/log/ppp.log

Note that syslogd does not create the les if they dont exist.

Userland programs
A number of userland programs are useful for divining whats going on in the kernel:

ps shows selected elds from the process structures. With an understanding of the structures,
it can give a good idea of whats going on.

top is like a repetitive ps : it shows the most active processes at regular intervals. vmstat shows a number of parameters, including virtual memory. It can also be set up to run
at regular intervals.

iostat is similar to vmstat, and it duplicates some elds, but it concentrates more on I/O activity.

netstat show network information. It can also be set up to show transfer rates for specic interfaces.

Debugging Kernel Problems

systat is a curses-based program which displays a large number of parameters, including

most of the parameters displayed by vmstat, iostat and netstat.

ktrace traces system calls and their return values for a specic process. Its like a GIGO :
you see what goes in and what comes out again.

ps
Most people use ps displays various process state. Most people use it for elds like PID, command and CPU time usage, but it can also show a number of other more subtle items of information:

When a process is sleeping (which is the normal case), WCHAN displays a string indicating
where it is sleeping. With the aid of the kernel code, you can then get a reasonably good idea what the process is doing. FreeBSD calls this eld MWCHAN, since it can also show the name of a mutex on which the process is blocked.

STAT shows current process state. There are a number of these, and they change from time
to time, and they differ between the versions of BSD. Theyre dened in the man page.

ags (F) show process ags. Like the state information they change from time to time and
differ between the versions of BSD. Theyre also dened in the man page.

There are a large number of optional elds which can also be specied with the -O option.
Here are some example processes:
$ ps lax UID PID 0 0 PPID CPU PRI NI 0 0 -16 0 VSZ 0 RSS MWCHAN STAT 12 sched DLs TT ?? TIME COMMAND 0:15.62 (swapper)

The swapper, sleeping on sched. Its in a short-term wait (D status ), it has pages locked in core (L) status, and its a session leader (s status), though this isnt particularly relevant here. The name in parentheses suggests that its swapped out, but it should have a W status for that.
1004 0 60226 0 -84 0 0 0 ZW ?? 0:00.00 (galeon-bin)

This process is a zombie (Z status), and whats left of it is swapped out (W status, name in parentheses).
0 1 0 0 8 0 708 84 wait ILs ?? 0:14.58 /sbin/init --

init is waiting for longer than 20 seconds (I state). Like swapper, it has pages locked in core and is a session leader. A number of other system processes have similar ags.
0 7 0 0 171 0 0 12 RL ?? 80:46.00 (pagezero)

pagezero is waiting to run (R), and also no wait channel.

0 8 0 2 4 0 0 12 sbwait DL ?? 1:44.51 (bufdaemon)

sbwait is the name of wait channel here, but its also the name of the function that is waiting:

Debugging Kernel Problems

/* * Wait for data to arrive at/drain from a socket buffer. */ int sbwait(sb) struct sockbuf *sb; { sb->sb_flags |= SB_WAIT; return (tsleep(&sb->sb_cc, (sb->sb_flags & SB_NOINTR) ? PSOCK : PSOCK | PCATCH, "sbwait", sb->sb_timeo)); }

10

The comment says it all.

0 11 0 150 -16 0 0 12 RL ?? 52617:10.66 (idle)

The idle process (currently only present in FreeBSD release 5) uses up the remaining CPU time on the system. That explains the high CPU usage. The priority is bogus: idle only gets to run when nothing else is runnable.
0 0 12 13 0 0 0 -44 0 -48 0 0 0 0 12 12 WL WL ?? ?? 39:11.32 43:42.81 (swi1: net) (swi6: tty:sio clock)

These two processes are examples of software interrupt threads. Again, they only exist in FreeBSD release 5.
0 0 20 21 0 0 0 -64 34 -68 0 0 0 0 12 12 Giant WL LL ?? ?? 0:00.00 116:10.44 (irq11: ahc0) (irq12: rl0)

These are hardware interrupts. irq12 is waiting on the Giant mutex.

top
top is like a repetitive ps It shows similar information at regular intervals. By default, the busiest processes are listed at the top of the display, and the number of processes can be limited. It also shows additional summary information about CPU and memory usage:
load averages: 1.42, 1.44, 1.41 16:50:23 41 processes: 2 running, 38 idle, 1 zombie CPU states: 81.4% user, 0.0% nice, 16.7% system, 2.0% interrupt, 0.0% idle Memory: Real: 22M/48M act/tot Free: 12M Swap: 7836K/194M used/tot PID 336 1407 14928 9452 18876 399 7280 8949 10503 USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE build 64 0 12M grog 28 0 176K grog 2 0 1688K grog 18 4 620K root 2 0 28K grog 2 4 636K grog 2 0 9872K root 2 0 896K root 18 0 692K RES 244K 328K 204K 280K 72K 0K 124K 104K 248K STATE run run sleep idle sleep idle idle sleep sleep WAIT select pause select select select select pause TIME CPU COMMAND 0:25 69.82% cc1 0:25 1.03% top 0:17 0.54% xterm 376:06 0.00% xearth 292:22 0.00% screenblank 126:37 0.00% <fvwm2> 102:42 0.00% Xsun 37:48 0.00% sendmail 24:39 0.00% ntpd

Here again the system is 100% busy. This machine (ame.lemis.com ) is a SPARCstation 5 running OpenBSD and part of the Samba build farm. The CPU usage shows that over 80% of the

11

Debugging Kernel Problems

time is spent in user mode, and less than 20% in system and interrupt mode combined. Most of the time here is being used by the C compiler, cc1. The CPU usage percentages are calculated dynamically and never quite match up. The distinction between system and interrupt mode is the distinction between process and nonprocess activities. This is a relatively easy thing to measure, but in traditional BSDs its not clear how much of this time is due to I/O and how much due to other interrupts. Theres a big difference in the reactiveness of a system with high system load and a system with high interrupt load: since load-balancing doesnt work for interrupts, a system with high interrupt times reacts very sluggishly. Sometimes things look different. Heres a FreeBSD 5-CURRENT test system:
last pid: 79931; load averages: 2.16, 2.35, 2.21 up 0+01:25:07 18:07:46 75 processes: 4 running, 51 sleeping, 20 waiting CPU states: 18.5% user, 0.0% nice, 81.5% system, 0.0% interrupt, 0.0% idle Mem: 17M Active, 374M Inact, 69M Wired, 22M Cache, 60M Buf, 16M Free Swap: 512M Total, 512M Free PID 10 79828 6 19 12 303 USERNAME root root root root root root PRI NICE -16 0 125 0 20 0 -68 -187 -48 -167 96 0 SIZE 0K 864K 0K 0K 0K 1052K RES 12K 756K 12K 12K 12K 688K STATE RUN select syncer WAIT WAIT select TIME 18:11 0:00 0:35 0:12 0:08 0:05 WCPU 1.07% 3.75% 0.20% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% CPU 1.07% 0.83% 0.20% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% COMMAND idle make syncer irq9: rl0 swi6: tty:sio clock rlogind

This example was taken during a kernel build. Again the CPU is 100% busy. Strangely, though, the busiest process is the idle process, with only a little over 1% of the total load. Whats missing here? The processes that start and nish in the interval between successive displays. One way to check this is to look at the last pid eld at the top left (this eld is not present in the NetBSD and OpenBSD versions): if it increments rapidly, its probable that these processes are using the CPU time. Theres another thing to note here: the CPU time is spread between user time (18.5%) and system time (81.5%). Thats not a typical situation. This build was done on a test version of FreeBSD 5-CURRENT, which includes a lot of debugging code, notably the WITNESS code which will be discussed later. It would be very difcult to nd this with ps.

Load average
Its worth looking at the load averages mentioned on the rst line. These values are printed by a number of other commands, notably w and uptime. The load average is the length of the run queue averaged over three intervals: 1, 5 and 15 minutes. The run queue contains jobs ready to be scheduled, and is thus an indication of how busy the system is.

Debugging Kernel Problems

12

vmstat
vmstat was originally intended to show virtual memory statistics, but current versions show a number of other parameters as well. It can take a numeric argument representing the number of seconds between samples:
$ vmstat 1 procs memory page r b w avm fre flt re 1 1 0 17384 23184 200 0 2 1 0 17420 23148 2353 0 1 1 0 18488 22292 2654 0 disks sr s0 c0 0 9 0 0 24 0 0 20 0 faults cpu in sy cs us sy id 236 222 35 22 7 70 271 1471 94 36 45 20 261 1592 102 35 51 14

pi 0 0 0

po 0 0 0

fr 0 0 0

The base form of this command is essentially identical in all BSDs. The parameters are:

The rst section (procs) shows the number of processes in different states. r shows the
number of processes on the run queue (effectively a snapshot of the load average). b counts processes blocked on resources such as I/O or memory. The counts processes that are runnable but is swapped out. This almost never happens any more.

The next subsection describes memory availability. avm is the number of active virtual
memory pages, and fre is the number of free pages.

Next come paging activity. re is the number of page reclaims, pi the number of pages
paged in from disk, po the number of pages paged out to disk, fr the number of page faults, and sr the number of pages scanned by the memory manager per second.

iostat
Shows statistics about I/O activity. Can be repeated to show current activity. Can specify which devices or device categories to observe.
Example (OpenBSD SPARC)
tty sd0 tin tout KB/t t/s MB/s 0 0 7.77 9 0.07 0 222 56.00 1 0.05 0 75 0.00 0 0.00 0 76 32.00 1 0.03 0 74 0.00 0 0.00 0 74 0.00 0 0.00 0 74 5.30 20 0.10 0 73 6.40 51 0.32 0 75 5.55 49 0.27 0 73 4.91 54 0.26 0 75 6.91 54 0.36 0 72 9.80 49 0.46 0 76 17.94 36 0.63 0 75 19.20 5 0.09 0 74 37.33 3 0.11 0 75 56.00 1 0.06 0 73 0.00 0 0.00 rd0 KB/t t/s MB/s 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 rd1 KB/t t/s MB/s 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 cpu us ni sy in id 19 0 6 1 74 69 0 29 2 0 81 0 19 0 0 84 0 16 0 0 90 0 7 3 0 95 0 5 0 0 40 0 31 0 29 12 0 10 3 75 24 0 12 3 61 21 0 9 1 69 39 0 7 3 51 31 0 6 4 59 34 0 12 0 54 93 0 5 1 1 93 0 6 1 0 82 0 17 1 0 83 0 16 1 0

13

Debugging Kernel Problems

systat
Shows a number of different parameters in graphical form. Includes iostat, netstat and vmstat. Ugly display.

systat example
Load Average cpu /0 || /1 /2 /3 /50 /4 /60 /5 /70 /6 /80 /7 /90 /8 /100 /9 /10

/0 /10 /20 /30 /40 user|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX nice| system|XXXXX interrupt| idle|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ad0

/0 /10 /20 /30 /40 /50 /60 /70 MB/sXXXX tps|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

/80

/90

/100

systat vmstat, FreeBSD

24 users Mem:KB Act All Load 0.85 0.25 0.15 Free 10404 count pages Sof 26 Flt 6 Sun Jan 20 14:40 VN PAGER in out SWAP PAGER in out

REAL Tot Share 150180 3536 252828 4808 p d s 1 24 w

VIRTUAL Tot Share 220116 10096 3565340 15372 Csw 147 Trp 14

Proc:r 2

Sys Int 63262294

1.5%Sys 98.5%Intr 0.0%User 0.0%Nice 0.0%Idl | | | | | | | | | | =+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Namei Calls Disks ad0 KB/t 8.00 tps 1 MB/s 0.01 % busy 0 Name-cache hits % ad2 0.00 0 0.00 0 cd0 0.00 0 0.00 0 Dir-cache hits % cd1 0.00 0 0.00 0 sa0 pass0 pass1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0

56060 162880 24140 9748 656

35712 27 17462 22916 17020

zfod Interrupts cow 62295 total wire 1 ata0 irq14 act ata1 irq15 inact ahc0 irq11 cache 27 mux irq10 free 4 atkbd0 irq daefr psm0 irq12 prcfr 77 sio1 irq3 react ppc0 irq7 pdwak 99 clk irq0 pdpgs 128 rtc irq8 intrn 61959 lpt0 irq7 buf dirtybuf desiredvnodes numvnodes freevnodes

systat vmstat, NetBSD

1 user Load 2.74 1.91 1.60 PAGING Thu Jan 17 14:31:09 SWAPPING Interrupts

memory totals (in KB)

Debugging Kernel Problems

real 9868 21140 d 1 s 5 w virtual 14100 25372 Csw 40 free 6364 658588 Trp 27 Sys 193 in 1 Sof 20 out in out 132 100 14 18 total irq0 irq9 irq10

14

Active All Proc:r 2

ops pages Int 133

Flt 8 6 6

95.9% Sy 1.4% Us 0.0% Ni 0.0% In 2.7% Id | | | | | | | | | | | ================================================> Namei Calls 1043 Discs seeks xfers Kbyte %busy fd0 Sys-cache hits % 806 77 sd0 14 164 21.2 md0 Proc-cache hits % 34 3

1 64 85 1372 941

forks fkppw fksvm pwait relck rlkok noram ndcpy fltcp zfod cow fmin ftarg itarg wired pdfre pdscn

systat vmstat, OpenBSD

3 users Load 1.19 1.52 1.81 PAGING in out 2 Sof Flt 374 Thu Jan 17 14:31:48 2002 SWAPPING in out Interrupts 227 total 5 lev1 17 lev4 5 lev6 100 clock lev12 100 prof

Mem:KB REAL VIRTUAL Tot Share Tot Share Act 3348 1068 12940 6704 All 35232 11888 358812 148796 Proc:r p d 2 s 5 w Csw 29 Trp 206

Free 27016 count pages Sys 184 Int 227

9.3% Sys 85.5% User 0.0% Nice 4.4% Idle | | | | | | | | | | =====>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Namei Calls 212 Discs seeks xfers Kbyte sec sd0 411 411 33 0.1 Sys-cache hits % 203 96 rd0 rd1 Proc-cache hits % 3 1

17 3 2 62 | 385 16.14 5408 18312 11220 27016 372 46

cow objlk objht zfod nzfod %zfod kern wire act inact free daefr prcfr react scan hdrev intrn

ktrace
Traces at system call interface. Doesnt require source code. Shows a limited amount of information. Can be useful to nd which les are being opened.

15

Debugging Kernel Problems

ktrace example
sh NAMI "/bin/url_handler.sh" sh RET stat -1 errno 2 No such file or directory sh CALL stat(0x80ec108,0xbfbff0b0) sh NAMI "/sbin/url_handler.sh" sh RET stat -1 errno 2 No such file or directory sh CALL stat(0x80ec108,0xbfbff0b0) sh NAMI "/usr/local/bin/url_handler.sh" sh RET stat -1 errno 2 No such file or directory sh CALL stat(0x80ec108,0xbfbff0b0) sh NAMI "/etc/url_handler.sh" sh RET stat -1 errno 2 No such file or directory sh CALL stat(0x80ec108,0xbfbff0b0) sh NAMI "/usr/X11R6/bin/url_handler.sh" sh RET stat -1 errno 2 No such file or directory sh CALL stat(0x80ec108,0xbfbff0b0) sh NAMI "/usr/monkey/url_handler.sh" sh RET stat -1 errno 2 No such file or directory sh CALL stat(0x80ec108,0xbfbff0b0) sh NAMI "/usr/local/sbin/url_handler.sh" sh RET stat -1 errno 2 No such file or directory sh CALL break(0x80f3000) sh RET break 0 sh CALL write(0x2,0x80f2000,0x1a) sh GIO fd 2 wrote 26 bytes "url_handler.sh: not found " 71602 sh RET write 26/0x1a 71602 sh CALL exit(0x7f) 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602 71602

Debugging Kernel Problems

16

3
Hardware data structures
Stack frames
Most modern machines have a stack-oriented architecture, though the support is rather rudimentary in some cases. Everybody knows what a stack is, but here well use a more restrictive denition: a stack is a linear list of storage elements, each relating to a particular function invocation. These are called stack frames. Each stack frame contains

The parameters with which the function was invoked. The address to which to return when the function is complete. Saved register contents. Variables local to the function. The address of the previous stack frame.
With the exception of the return address, any of these elds may be omitted.1 Its possible to implement a stack in software as a linked list of elements, but most machines nowadays have significant hardware support and use a reserved area for the stack. Such stack implementations typically supply two hardware registers to address the stack:

The stack pointer points to the last used word of the stack. The frame pointer points to somewhere in the middle of the stack frame.
The resultant memory image looks like:
1. Debuggers recognize stack frames by the frame pointer. If you dont save the frame pointer, it will still be pointing to the previous frame, so the debugger will report that you are in the previous function. This frequently happens in system call linkage functions, which typically do not save a stack linkage, or on the very rst instruction of a function, before the linkage has been built. In addition, some optimizers remove the stack frame.

17

Debugging Kernel Problems

Function arguments Return address Old value of frame pointer Automatic variables Temporary storage Function arguments Frame pointer Stack pointer Return address Old value of frame pointer Automatic variables Temporary storage

Stack frame 0 Stack frame 1

Figure 1: Function stack frame The individual parts of the stack frames are built at various times. In the following sections, well use the Intel ia32 (i386) architecture as an example to see how the stack gets set up and freed. The ia32 architecture has the following registers, all 32 bits wide:

The Program Counter is the traditional name for the register that points to the next
instruction to be executed. Intel calls it the Instruction Pointer or eip. The e at the beginning of the names of most registers stands for extended. Its a reference to the older 8086 architecture, which has shorter registers with similar names: for example, on the 8086 this register is called ip and is 16 bits wide.

The Stack Pointer is called esp. The Frame Pointer is called ebp (Extended Base Pointer ), referring to the fact that it points
to the stack base.

The arithmetic and index registers are a mess on ia32. Their naming goes back to the 8 bit
8008 processor (1972). In those days, the only arithmetic register was the the Accumulator. Nowadays some instructions can use other registers, but the name remains: eax, Extended Accumulator Extended (no joke: the rst extension was from 8 to 16 bits, the second from 16 to 32).

The other registers are ebx, ecx and edx. Each of them has some special function, but they
can be used in many arithmetic instructions as well. ecx can hold a count for certain repeat instructions.

The registers esi (Extended Source Index ) and edi (Extended Destination Index ) are purely
index registers. Their original use was implicit in certain repeated instructions, where they are incremented automatically.

The eflags register contains program status information.

Debugging Kernel Problems

18

The segment registers contain information about memory segments. Their usage depends on
the mode in which the processor is running. Some registers can be subdivided: for example, the two halves of eax are called ah (high bits) and al (low bits).

Stack growth during function calls

Now that we have an initial stack, lets see how it grows and shrinks during a function call. Well consider the following simple C program compiled on the i386 architecture:
foo (int a, int b) { int c = a * b; int d = a / b; printf ("%d %d\n", c, d); } main (int { int x = int y = foo (y, } argc, char *argv []) 4; 5; x);

The assembler code for the calling sequence for foo in main is:
pushl -4(%ebp) pushl -8(%ebp) call _foo addl $8,%esp value of x value of y call the function and remove parameters

The push instructions decrement the stack pointer and then place the word values of x and y at the location to which the stack pointer now points. The call instruction pushes the contents of the current instruction pointer (the address of the instruction following the call instruction) onto the stack, thus saving the return address, and loads the instruction pointer with the address of the function. We now have: argc return to start saved frame pointer local var x local var y parameter a parameter b return to main

Frame pointer

main foo

stack frame stack frame

Stack pointer

Figure 2: Stack frame after call instruction The called function foo saves the frame pointer (in this architecture, the register is called ebp, for extended base pointer), and loads it with the current value of the stack pointer register esp.

19
_foo: pushl %ebp movl %esp,%ebp save ebp on stack and load with current value of esp

Debugging Kernel Problems

At this point, the stack linkage is complete, and this is where most debuggers normally set a breakpoint when you request on to be placed at the entry to a function. Next, foo creates local storage for c and d. They are each 4 bytes long, so it subtracts 8 from the esp register to make space for them. Finally, it saves the register ebx--the compiler has decided that it will need this register in this function.
subl $8,%esp pushl %ebx create two words on stack and save ebx register

Our stack is now complete. saved frame pointer local var x local var y parameter a parameter b return to main saved frame pointer local var c local var d saved ebx contents

main foo

stack frame stack frame

Frame pointer

Stack pointer

Figure 3: Complete stack frame after entering called function The frame pointer isnt absolutely necessary: you can get by without it and refer to the stack pointer instead. The problem is that during the execution of the function, the compiler may save further temporary information on the stack, so its difcult to keep track of the value of the stack pointer--thats why most architectures use a frame pointer, which does stay constant during the execution of the function. Some optimizers, including newer versions of gcc, give you the option of compiling without a stack frame. This makes debugging almost impossible. On return from the function, the sequence is reversed:
movl -12(%ebp),%ebx leave ret and restore register ebx reload ebp and esp and return

The rst instruction reloads the saved register ebx, which could be stored anywhere in the stack. This instruction does not modify the stack. The leave instruction loads the stack pointer esp from the frame pointer ebp, which effectively discards the part stack below the saved ebp value. Then it loads ebp with the contents of the word to which it points, the saved ebp, effectively reversing the stack linkage. The stack now looks like it did on entry.

Debugging Kernel Problems

20

Next, the ret instruction pops the return address into the instruction pointer, causing the next instruction to be fetched from the address following the call instruction in the calling function. The function parameters x and y are still on the stack, so the next instruction in the calling function removes them by adding to the stack pointer:
addl $8,%esp and remove parameters

Stack frame at process start

A considerable amount of work on the stack occurs at process start, before the main function is called. Heres an example of what you might nd on an i386 architecture at the point where you enter main:
ps information Environment variables

Program arguments NULL more environment pointers env [1] env [0] NULL more argument pointers argv [1] argv [0] envp argv argc

Frame pointer %ebp Stack pointer %esp

Contrary to the generally accepted view, the prototype for main in all versions of UNIX, and also in Linux and other operating systems, is:
int main (int argc, char *argv [], char *env []);

21

Debugging Kernel Problems

4
The GNU debugger
This chapter takes a look at the GNU debugger, gdb, as it is used in userland.

What debuggers do
gdb runs on UNIX and similar platforms. In UNIX, a debugger is a process that takes control of the execution of another process. Most versions of UNIX allow only one way for the debugger to take control: it must start the process that it debugs. Some versions, notably FreeBSD and SunOS 4, but not related systems like BSD/OS or Solaris 2, also allow the debugger to attach to a running process. gdb supports attaching on platforms which offer the facility. Whichever debugger you use, there are a surprisingly small number of commands that you need:

A stack trace command answers the question, Where am I, and how did I get here?, and is
almost the most useful of all commands. Its certainly the rst thing you should do when examining a core dump or after getting a signal while debugging the program.

Displaying data is the most obvious requirement: what is the current value of the variable
bar?

Displaying register contents is really the same thing as displaying program data. Youll normally only look at registers if youre debugging at the assembly code level, but its nice to know that most systems return values from a function in a specic register (for example, %eax on the Intel 386 architecture, a0 on the MIPS architecture, or %o0 on the SPARC architecture.1 so you may nd yourself using this command to nd out the values which a function returns.2

1. In SPARC, the register names change on return from a function. The function places the return value in %i0, which becomes %o0 after returning. 2. Shouldnt the debugger volunteer this information? Yes, it should, but many dont. No debugger that I know of even comes close to being perfect.

Debugging Kernel Problems

22

Modifying data and register contents is an obvious way of modifying program execution. breakpoints stop execution of the process when the process attempts to execute an instruction
at a certain address.

Single stepping originally meant to execute a single machine instruction and then return control to the debugger. This level of control is no longer of much use: the machine could execute hundreds of millions of instructions before hitting the bug. Nowadays, there are four different kinds of single stepping. You can choose one of each of these options:

Instead of executing a single machine instruction, it might execute a single high-level language instruction or a single line of code.

Single stepping a function call instruction will normally land you in the function youre
calling. Frequently, youre not interested in the function: youre pretty sure that it works correctly, and you just want to continue in the current function. Most debuggers have the ability to step "over" a function call rather than through it. You dont get the choice with a system call: you always step "over" it, since there is usually no way to trace into the kernel. To trace system calls, you use either a system call trace utility such as ktrace, or a kernel debugger. In the following section, well look at how gdb implements these functions.

The gdb command set

In this section, well look at the gdb command set from a practical point of view: how do we use the commands that are available? This isnt meant to be an exhaustive description: if you have gdb , you should also have the documentation, both in GNU info form and also in hardcopy. Here well concentrate on how to use the commands.

Breakpoints and Watchpoints

As we have seen, the single biggest difference between a debugger and other forms of debugging is that a debugger can stop and restart program execution. The debugger will stop execution under two circumstances: if the process receives a signal, or if you tell it to stop at a certain point. For historical reasons, gdb refers to these points as breakpoints or watchpoints, depending on how you specify them:

A breakpoint tells gdb to take control of process execution when the program would execute
a certain code address.

A watchpoint tells gdb to take control of process execution when a certain memory address
is changed. Conceptually, there is little difference between these two functions: a breakpoint checks for a certain value in the program counter, the register that addresses the next instruction to be executed, while a watchpoint checks for a certain value in just about anything else. The distinction is made because the implementation is very different. Most machines specify a special breakpoint instruction, but even on those machines that do not, its easy enough to nd an instruction which will do the job. The system replaces the instruction at the breakpoint address with a breakpoint

23

Debugging Kernel Problems

instruction. When the instruction is executed, the breakpoint instruction causes a trap, and the system invokes the debugger. On the other hand, you cant use this technique for watching for changed memory contents. gdb solves this problem by executing the program one instruction at a time and examining the contents of memory after every instruction. This means that for every program instruction, gdb will execute thousands of instructions to check the memory locations. This makes program execution several orders of magnitude slower. Many systems provide hardware support for this kind of check. For example, the Intel 386 architecture has four breakpoint registers. Each register can specify an address and an event for which a breakpoint interrupt should be generated. The events are instruction execution (this is the classical breakpoint we just discussed), memory write (our watchpoint), and memory read (which gdb cant detect at all). This support allows you to run at full speed and still perform the checks. Unfortunately, most UNIX systems dont support this hardware, so you need to run in stone-age simulation mode. You set a breakpoint with the breakpoint command, which mercifully can be abbreviated to b . Typically, youll set at least one breakpoint when you start the program, and possibly later youll set further breakpoints as you explore the behaviour of the program. For example, you might start a program like this:
$ gdb bisdnd GDB is free software and you are welcome to 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. GDB 4.13 (i386-unknown-freebsd), Copyright 1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc... (gdb) b handle_charge set a breakpoint at handle_charge Breakpoint 1 at 0x91e9: file msgutil.c, line 200.

gdb prints this political statement every time you start it. Ive shown it in this case in respect of the sentiments of the people who produced it, but in the remaining examples in this book Ill omit it, since it doesnt change from one invocation to the next.

Running the program

When you start gdb, its much like any other interactive program: it reads input from stdin and writes to stdout. You specify the name of the program you want to start, but initially thats all. Before you actually debug the process, you need to start it. While doing so, you specify the parameters that you would normally specify on the command line. In our case, our program bisdnd would normally be started as:
$ bisdnd -s 24 -F

It would be tempting (in fact, it would be a very good idea) just to put the word gdb in front of this command line invocation, but for historical reasons all UNIX debuggers take exactly two parameters: the rst is the name of the program to start, and the second, if present, is the name of a core dump le. Instead, the normal way to specify the parameters is when we actually run the program:
(gdb) r -s 24 -F and run the program

Debugging Kernel Problems

Starting program: /usr/src/bisdn/bisdnd/bisdnd -s 24 -F

24

An alternative would be with the set args command:

(gdb) set args -s 24 -F dene the arguments (gdb) r and run the program Starting program: /usr/src/bisdn/bisdnd/bisdnd -s 24 -F

Stopping the process

Once you let the process run, it should run in the same way as it would do without a debugger, until it hits a breakpoint or it receives a signal. There are a few wrinkles, but theyre relatively uncommon. This could go on for hours, of course, depending on what the process does. Possibly you are concerned about the fact that the process might be looping or hanging, or youre just curious about what its doing right now. Before you can talk to gdb again, you need to stop the process. This isnt the same thing as termination : the process continues to exist, but its execution is suspended until you start it again. An obvious way to get gdb s attention again is to send it a signal. Thats simple: you can send a SIGINT via the keyboard, usually with the CTRL-C key:
C Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt. 0x8081f31 in read () (gdb)

Alternatively, of course, you could hit a breakpoint, which also stops the execution:
Breakpoint 1, handle_charge (isdnfd=4, cp=0x11028, units=1, now=0xefbfd2b8, an=3, channel=0) at msgutil.c:200 200 cp->charge = units; (gdb)

Stack trace
One we have stopped the process, the most obvious thing is to take a look around. As we have already seen, the stack trace command is probably the most useful of all. If your program bombs out, it will usually stop in a well-dened place, and your rst question will be "how did I get here?". gdb implements this function with the backtrace command, which can be abbreviated to bt. A backtrace looks like:
(gdb) bt #0 handle_charge (isdnfd=4, cp=0x11028, units=1, now=0xefbfd2b8, an=3, channel=0) at msgutil.c:200 #1 0x95e0 in info_dss1 (isdnfd=4, s=0xefbfd504 "i") at msgutil.c:324 #2 0x7ab3 in msg_info (isdnfd=4, rbuf=0xefbfd504 "i") at msg.c:569 #3 0x1f80 in main (argc=7, argv=0xefbfde30) at main.c:441 (gdb)

This format looks rather unintelligible at rst, so lets look at it in more detail. Each entry refers to a particular stack frame. The information is:

25

Debugging Kernel Problems

The stack frame number , with a leading #. You can refer to this number with the frame
command.

The address of the next instruction in the stack frame. In frame 0, the current execution address, this is the next instruction that will be executed when you continue from the debugger. In the other stack frames, its the next instruction that will be executed after returning control to that frame. In frame 0, the address is specied simply as handle_charge. This means that the program is stopped at the beginning of the function. In the other frames, the address is specied in hexadecimal as well. It doesnt tell you how far into the function you are.

The current values of the parameters supplied to the function. Youll only see this information if you have compiled the source le with the -g option. Dont rely on this information being accurate: its common enough for programs to change the values of the parameters supplied, and the values shown here are the values which are on the stack at the time the program was stopped.

The name of the le and the line number of the source instruction.
Once you have found where you are, the most obvious thing to do is to look around a bit. gdb supplies a number of options which help. Initially, they apply to frame 0, but you can change that with the frame command. First, lets look at the source code where we are:

Listing source code

To look at the source code in the current position, use the list command, which can be abbreviated to l:
(gdb) l 195 int units, 196 struct timeval *now, 197 int an, 198 int channel) 199 { 200 cp->charge = units; 201 202 if (cp->aoc_last.tv_sec == 0) /* if secs are 0, so will be usecs */ 203 cp->aoc_last = *now; 204 else if (cp->aoc_now.tv_sec == 0)

If you look back to the stack trace, youll see that our current position is at line 200, but gdb started at line 195. This is an attempt to show the area around the function. As you can see in this case, it wasnt enough: the function declaration takes up a number of lines. There are two parameters (isdnfd and cp) which are not displayed, so lets back up three lines (to 192) and have a look there:
(gdb) l 192 187 } 188 189 /*---------------------------------------------------------------------------* 190 * process the charging units 191 *---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ 192 static void 193 handle_charge (int isdnfd, 194 struct confdata *cp, 195 int units,

Debugging Kernel Problems

196 struct timeval *now,

26

How about that, gdb always goes back 5 lines. Still, now we have the start of our function. If we want to see more, we just press ENTER:
(gdb) 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 (ENTER pressed) int an, int channel) { cp->charge = units; if (cp->aoc_last.tv_sec == 0) cp->aoc_last = *now; else if (cp->aoc_now.tv_sec == 0) cp->aoc_now = *now; else /* if secs are 0, so will be usecs */

In general, if you press ENTER, gdb will attempt to re-execute the last instruction, possibly with parameters it calculates (like the starting address for the list command).

Examining other stack frames

Weve just arrived in this function, so were probably more interested in the calling function than the function were in. Indeed, maybe were just wondering how we can get here at all. The stack trace has shown us where we came from, but we might want to look at it in more detail. We do that with the frame command, which can be abbreviated to f. We supply the number of the frame which we want to examine:
(gdb) f 1 look at frame 1 #1 0x95e0 in info_dss1 (isdnfd=4, s=0xefbfd504 "i") at msgutil.c:324 324 handle_charge (isdnfd, cp, i, &time_now, appl_no, channel); (gdb) l and list the source code 319 gettimeofday (&time_now, NULL); 320 321 cp = getcp (appl_typ, appl_no); 322 i = decode_q932_aoc (s); 323 if (i != -1) 324 handle_charge (isdnfd, cp, i, &time_now, appl_no, channel); 325 break; 326 327 default: 328 dump_info (appl_typ, appl_no, mp->info);

Not surprisingly, line 324 is a call to handle_charge. This shows an interesting point: clearly, the return address cant be the beginning of the instruction. It must be somewhere near the end. If I stop execution on line 324, I would expect to stop before calling handle_charge. If I stop execution at address 0x95e0, I would expect to stop after calling handle_charge. Well look into this question more further down, but its important to bear in mind that a line number does not uniquely identify the instruction.

Displaying data
The next thing you might want to do is to look at some of the variables in the current stack environment. There are a number of ways to do this. The most obvious way is to specify a variable you want to look at. In gdb, you do this with the print command, which can be abbreviated to p. For example, as we have noted, the values of the parameters that backtrace prints are the

27

Debugging Kernel Problems

values at the time when process execution stopped. Maybe we have reason to think they might have changed since the call. The parameters are usually copied on to the stack, so changing the values of the parameters supplied to a function doesnt change the values used to form the call. We can nd the original values in the calling frame. Looking at line 324 above, we have the values isdnfd, cp, i, &time_now, appl_no, and channel. Looking at them,
(gdb) p isdnfd $1 = 6 an int

The output format means result 1 has the value 6. You can refer to these calculated results at a later point if you want, rather than recalculating them:
(gdb) p $1 $2 = 6 (gdb) p cp a struct pointer $3 = (struct confdata *) 0x11028

Well, that seems reasonable: cp is a pointer to a struct confdata, so gdb shows us the address. Thats not usually of much use, but if we want to see the contents of the struct to which it points, we need to specify that fact in the standard C manner:
(gdb) p *cp $4 = {interface = "ipi3", \000 <repeats 11 times>, atyp = 0, appl = 3, name = "daemon\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000", controller = 0, isdntype = 1, telnloc_ldo = "919120", \000 <repeats 26 times>, telnrem_ldo = "919122", \000 <repeats 26 times>, telnloc_rdi = "919120", \000 <repeats 26 times>, telnrem_rdi = "6637919122", \000 <repeats 22 times>, reaction = 0, service = 2, protocol = 0, telaction = 0, dialretries = 3, recoverytime = 3, callbackwait = 1, ...much more

This format is not the easiest to understand, but there is a way to make it better: the command set print pretty causes gdb to structure printouts in a more appealing manner:
(gdb) set print pretty (gdb) p *cp $5 = { interface = "ipi3", \000 <repeats 11 times>, atyp = 0, appl = 3, name = "daemon\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000", controller = 0, isdntype = 1, telnloc_ldo = "919120", \000 <repeats 26 times>, telnrem_ldo = "919122", \000 <repeats 26 times>, telnloc_rdi = "919120", \000 <repeats 26 times>, telnrem_rdi = "6637919122", \000 <repeats 22 times>, ...much more

The disadvantage of this method, of course, is that it takes up much more space on the screen. Its not uncommon to nd that the printout of a structure takes up several hundred lines. The format isnt always what youd like. For example, time_now is a struct timeval, which looks like:
(gdb) p time_now $6 = { tv_sec = 835701726,

Debugging Kernel Problems

tv_usec = 238536 }

28

The value 835701726 is the number of seconds since the start of the epoch, 00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, the beginning of UNIX time. gdb provides no way to transform this value into a real date. On many systems, you can do it with a little-known feature of the date command:
$ date -r 835701726 Tue Jun 25 13:22:06 MET DST 1996

Displaying register contents

Sometimes its not enough to look at ofcial variables. Optimized code can store variables in registers without ever assigning them a memory location. Even when variables do have a memory location, you cant count on the compiler to store them there immediately. Sometimes you need to look at the register where the variable is currently stored. A lot of this is deep magic, but one case is relatively frequent: after returning from a function, the return value is stored in a specic register. In this example, which was run on FreeBSD on an Intel platform, the compiler returns the value in the register eax. For example:
Breakpoint 2, 0x133f6 in isatty () hit the breakpoint (gdb) fin continue until the end of the function Run till exit from #0 0x133f6 in isatty () 0x2fe2 in main (argc=5, argv=0xefbfd4c4) at mklinks.c:777 back in the calling function 777 if (interactive = isatty (Stdin) /* interactive */ (gdb) i reg look at the registers eax 0x1 1 isatty returned 1 ecx 0xefbfd4c4 -272640828 edx 0x1 1 ebx 0xefbfd602 -272640510 esp 0xefbfd48c 0xefbfd48c ebp 0xefbfd4a0 0xefbfd4a0 esi 0x0 0 edi 0x0 0 eip 0x2fe2 0x2fe2 eflags 0x202 514 (gdb)

This looks like overkill: we just wanted to see the value of the register eax, and we had to look at all values. An alternative in this case would have been to print out the value explicitly:
(gdb) p $eax $3 = 1

At this point, its worth noting that gdb is not overly consistent in its naming conventions. In the disassembler, it will use the standard assembler convention and display register contents with a % sign, for example %eax:
0xf011bc7c <mi_switch+116>: movl %edi,%eax

On the other hand, if you want to refer to the value of the register, we must specify it as $eax. gdb cant make any sense of %eax in this context:
(gdb) p %eax

29
syntax error

Debugging Kernel Problems

Single stepping
Single stepping in its original form is supported in hardware by many architectures: after executing a single instruction, the machine automatically generates a hardware interrupt that ultimately causes a SIGTRAP signal to the debugger. gdb performs this function with the stepi command. You wont want to execute individual machine instructions unless you are in deep trouble. Instead, you will execute a single line instruction, which effectively single steps until you leave the current line of source code. To add to the confusion, this is also frequently called single stepping. This command comes in two avours, depending on how it treats function calls. One form will execute the function and stop the program at the next line after the call. The other, more thorough form will stop execution at the rst executable line of the function. Its important to notice the difference between these two functions: both are extremely useful, but for different things. gdb performs single line execution omitting calls with the next command, and includes calls with the step command.
(gdb) n 203 (gdb) 204 (gdb) 216 (gdb) 222 (gdb) 240 (gdb) 243 } (gdb) info_dss1 328 (gdb) if (cp->aoc_last.tv_sec == 0) /* if secs are 0, so will be usecs */ (ENTER pressed) cp->aoc_last = *now; (ENTER pressed) if (do_fullscreen) (ENTER pressed) if ((cp->unit_length_typ == ULTYP_DYN) && (cp->aoc_valid == AOC_VALID)) (ENTER pressed) if (do_debug && cp->aoc_valid) (ENTER pressed) (ENTER pressed) (isdnfd=6, s=0xefbfcac0 "i") at msgutil.c:328 break;

Modifying the execution environment

In gdb, you do this with the set command. Jumping (changing the address from which the next instruction will be read) is really a special case of modifying register contents, in this case the program counter (the register that contains the address of the next instruction). Some architectures, including the Intel i386 architecture, refer to this register as the instruction pointer, which makes more sense. In gdb, use the jump command to do this. Use this instruction with care: if the compiler expects the stack to look different at the source and at the destination, this can easily cause incorrect execution.

Debugging Kernel Problems

30

Using debuggers
There are two possible approaches when using a debugger. The easier one is to wait until something goes wrong, then nd out where it happened. This is appropriate when the process gets a signal and does not overwrite the stack: the backtrace command will show you how it got there. Sometimes this method doesnt work well: the process may end up in no-mans-land, and you see something like:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0x0 in ?? () (gdb) bt abbreviation for backtrace #0 0x0 in ?? () nowhere (gdb)

Before dying, the process has mutilated itself beyond recognition. Clearly, the rst approach wont work here. In this case, we can start by conceptually dividing the program into a number of parts: initially we take the function main and the set of functions which main calls. By single stepping over the function calls until something blows up, we can localize the function in which the problem occurs. Then we can restart the program and single step through this function until we nd what it calls before dying. This iterative approach sounds slow and tiring, but in fact it works surprisingly well.

31

Debugging Kernel Problems

5
Preparing to debug a kernel
When building a kernel for debug purposes, you need to know how youre going to perform the debugging. If youre using remote debugging, its better to have the kernel sources and objects on the machine from which you perform the debugging, rather than on the machine youre debugging. That way the sources are available when the machine is frozen. On the other hand, you should always build the kernel on the machine which you are debugging. There are two ways to do this: 1. 2. Build the kernel on the debug target machine, then copy the les to the debugging machine. NFS mount the sources on the debugging machine and then build from the target machine.

Unless youre having problems with NFS, the second alternative is innitely preferable. Its very easy to forget to copy les across, and you may not notice your error until hours of head scratching have passed. I use the following method:

All sources are kept on a single large drive called /src and mounted on system echunga. /src contains subdirectories /src/FreeBSD, /src/NetBSD, /src/OpenBSD and /src/Linux.
These directories in turn contain subdirectories with source trees for specic systems. For example, /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src is the top-level build directory for system zaphod.

On zaphod I mount /src under the same name and create two symbolic links:

Debugging Kernel Problems

# ln -s /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src /usr/src # ln -s /src/FreeBSD/obj /usr/obj

32

In this manner, I can build the system in the normal way and have both sources and binaries on the remote system echunga. Normally the kernel build installs the kernel in the standard place: /boot/kernel/kernel for FreeBSD, /netbsd for NetBSD, or /bsd on OpenBSD. The versions installed there usually have the symbols stripped off, however, so youll have to nd where the unstripped versions are. That depends on how you build the kernel.

Kernel debuggers
Currently, two different kernel debuggers are available for BSD systems: ddb and gdb. ddb is a low-level debugger completely contained in the kernel, while you need a second machine to debug with gdb. You can build a FreeBSD kernel with support for both debuggers, but in NetBSD and OpenBSD you must make a choice.

Building a kernel for debugging

There are three different kinds of kernel parameters for debug kernels:

As an absolute minimum to be able to debug things easily, you need a kernel with debug symbols. This is commonly called a debug kernel, though in fact compiling with symbols adds almost no code, and the kernel is almost identical in size. Providing symbols does eliminate the chance for some optimizations, so the code may not be identical, but the differences are very minor. To create a debug kernel, ensure you have the following line in your kernel conguration le:
makeoptions DEBUG=-g #Build kernel with gdb(1) debug symbols

In most cases, this is simply a matter of removing the comment character at the beginning of the line.

If you want to use a kernel debugger, you need additional parameters to specify which debugger and some other options. These options differ between the individual systems, so well look at them in the following sections.

Finally, the kernel code offers specic consistency checking code. Often this changes as various parts of the kernel go through updates which require debugging. Again, these options differ between the individual systems, so well look at them in the following sections.

33

Debugging Kernel Problems

FreeBSD kernel
FreeBSD has recently changed the manner of building the kernel. The canonical method is now:
# cd /usr/src # make kernel KERNCONF=ZAPHOD

Assuming that /usr/src is not a symbolic link, this builds a kernel /usr/obj/sys/ZAPHOD/kernel.debug and a stripped copy at /usr/obj/sys/ZAPHOD/kernel. It then installs /usr/obj/sys/ZAPHOD/kernel. In the situations were looking at, though, youre unlikely to build the kernel in /usr/src, or if you do, it will be a symbolic link. In either case, the location of the kernel build directory changes. In the example above, if /usr/src is a symbolic link to /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src, the kernel binaries will be placed in /usr/obj/src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/ZAPHOD, and the debug kernel will be called /usr/obj/src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/ZAPHOD/kernel.debug.

NetBSD kernel
NetBSD now has a do-it-all tool called make.sh. As the name suggests, its a shell script front end to a bewildering number of build options. To build, say, a 1.6W kernel for daikon, an i386 box, you might do this:
# ln -s /src/NetBSD/1.6W-DAIKON/src /usr/src # cd /usr/src # ./build.sh tools

This step builds the tool chain in the directory tools. Continuing,
# ./build.sh kernel=DAIKON # mv /netbsd /onetbsd # cp sys/arch/i386/compile/DAIKON/netbsd /

This builds a kernel le /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/DAIKON/netbsd.gdb with debug symbols, and a le /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/DAIKON/netbsd without.

Serial console
Until about 15 years ago, the console of most UNIX machines was a terminal connected by a serial line. Nowadays, most modern machines have an integrated display. If the system fails, the display fails too. For debugging, its often useful to fall back to the older serial console. Instead of a terminal, though, its better to use a terminal emulator on another computer: that way you can save the screen output to a le.

Debugging Kernel Problems

34

Serial console: debugging machine

To boot a machine with a serial console, rst connect the system with a serial cable to a machine with a terminal emulator running at 9600 bps. Start a terminal emulator; I run the following command inside an X window so that I can copy any interesting output:
# cu -s 9600 -l /dev/cuaa0

The device name will change depending on the system youre using and the serial port hardware. The machine doesnt need to be a BSD machine. It can even be a real terminal if you can nd one, but that makes it difcult to save output. cu runs setuid to the user uucp. You may need to adjust ownership or permissions of the serial port, otherwise youll get the unlikely looking error
# cu -l /dev/cuaa1 cu: /dev/cuaa1: Line in use

Typical permissions are:

# ls -l /dev/cuaa0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 28, 0 Nov 3 15:23 /dev/cuaa0 # ps aux | grep cu uucp 6828 0.0 0.5 1020 640 p0 I+ 3:21PM 0:00.01 cu -s 9600 -l /dev/cuaa0 uucp 6829 0.0 0.5 1020 640 p0 I+ 3:21PM 0:00.01 cu -s 9600 -l /dev/cuaa0

Boot the target machine with serial console support:

On FreeBSD, interrupt the boot sequence at the following point:

Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt. Booting [kernel] in 6 seconds... press space bar here OK set console=comconsole the remainder appears on the serial console OK boot OK boot -d select chosen serial port and continue booting normally or boot and go into debugger

If you specify the -d ag to the boot command, the kernel will enter the kernel debugger as soon as it has enough context to do so. You choose a serial port by setting bit 0x80 of the device ags in /boot/loader.conf :
hint.sio.0.flags="0x90"

In this example, bit 0x10 is also set to tell the kernel gdb stub to access remote debugging via this port.

On NetBSD,
>> NetBSD BIOS Boot, revision 2.2 >> (user@buildhost, builddate) >> Memory: 637/15360 k Press return to boot now, any other key for boot menu booting hd0a:netbsd - starting in 5 press space bar here > consdev com0 the remainder appears on the serial console >> NetBSD/i386 BIOS Boot, Revision 2.12 select rst serial port

35
>> ([email protected], Sun Sep >> Memory: 637/129984 k > boot > boot -d 8 19:22:13 UTC 2002)

Debugging Kernel Problems

continue booting normally or boot and go into debugger

In NetBSD, you cant run the serial console and the debugger on the same interface. If the serial console is on the debugger interface, the bootstrap ignores the -d ag.

Problems with remote debugging

Remote debugging is a powerful technique, but its anything but perfect. Here are some of the things which will annoy you:

It slow. Few serial ports can run at more than 115,200 bps, a mere 11 kB/s. Dumping the
msgbuf (the equivalent of dmesg) can take ve minutes.

If that werent enough, the GNU remote serial protocol is wasteful. The link must work when the system is not running, so you cant use the serial drivers. Instead, theres a primitive driver, called a stub, which handles the I/O. Its inefcient, and for reasons we dont quite understand, at least on FreeBSD it does not work reliably over 9,600 bps, further slowing things down.

Why dont we know why the stub doesnt work reliably over 9,600 bps? How do you debug a
debugger? Code reading can only get you so far.

Legacy serial ports are on their way out. Modern laptops often dont have them any more,
and it wont be long before theyre a thing of the past. Alternative debugging interfaces are on the horizon. NetBSD supports debugging over Ethernet, but only on NE2000 cards. Theres some code for FreeBSD for the Intel fxp driver, but it hasnt been committed yet. In addition, the FreeBSD rewire (IEEE 1349) driver supports remote debugging. Well look at this below.

ddb
The local debugger is called ddb. It runs entirely on debugged machine and displays on the console (including serial console if selected). There are a number of ways to enter it: You can congure your system to enter the debugger automatically from panic. In FreeBSD, debugger_on_panic needs to be set.

DDB_UNATTENDED resets debugger_on_panic. Enter from keyboard with CTRL-ALT-ESC.

ddb entry from keyboard

Debugging Kernel Problems

# Debugger("manual escape to debugger") Stopped at Debugger+0x44: pushl %ebx db> t Debugger(c03ca5e9) at Debugger+0x44 scgetc(c16d9800,2,c16d1440,c046ac60,0) at scgetc+0x426 sckbdevent(c046ac60,0,c16d9800,c16d1440,c16d4300) at sckbdevent+0x1c9 atkbd_intr(c046ac60,0,cc04bd18,c024c79a,c046ac60) at atkbd_intr+0x22 atkbd_isa_intr(c046ac60) at atkbd_isa_intr+0x18 ithread_loop(c16d4300,cc04bd48,c16d4300,c024c670,0) at ithread_loop+0x12a fork_exit(c024c670,c16d4300,cc04bd48) at fork_exit+0x58 fork_trampoline() at fork_trampoline+0x8db> db>

36

ddb entry on panic

A call to panic produces a register summary:
Fatal trap 12: page fault fault virtual address = fault code = instruction pointer = stack pointer = frame pointer = code segment = = processor eflags = current process = while in kernel mode 0x64 supervisor read, page not present 0x8:0xc02451d7 0x10:0xccd99a20 0x10:0xccd99a24 base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 107 (syslogd)

If you have selected it, you will then enter ddb

kernel: type 12 trap, code=0 Stopped at devsw+0x7: cmpl $0,0x64(%ebx) db> tr stack backtrace devsw(0,c045cd80,cc066e04,cc066e04,0) at devsw+0x7 cn_devopen(c045cd80,cc066e04,0) at cn_devopen+0x27 cnopen(c0435ec8,6,2000,cc066e04,0) at cnopen+0x39 spec_open(ccd99b50,ccd99b24,c0320589,ccd99b50,ccd99bc4) at spec_open+0x127 spec_vnoperate(ccd99b50,ccd99bc4,c029984b,ccd99b50,ccd99d20) at spec_vnoperate+0x15 ufs_vnoperatespec(ccd99b50,ccd99d20,0,cc066e04,6) at ufs_vnoperatespec+0x15 vn_open(ccd99c2c,ccd99bf8,0,cc066f0c,cc066d00) at vn_open+0x333 open(cc066e04,ccd99d20,8054000,bfbfef64,bfbfef34) at open+0xde syscall(2f,2f,2f,bfbfef34,bfbfef64) at syscall+0x24c syscall_with_err_pushed() at syscall_with_err_pushed+0x1b --- syscall (5, FreeBSD ELF, open), eip = 0x280aae50, esp = 0xbfbfe960, ebp = 0xbfbfe9cc ---

The main disadvantage of ddb is the limited symbol support. This backtrace shows the function names, but not the parameters, and not the le names or line numbers. It also cannot display automatic variables, and it does not know the types of global variables.

Kernel gdb
Kernel gdb is the same gdb program you know and love in userland. It provides the symbolic capability that is missing in ddb, and also macro language capability. It can run on serial lines and post-mortem dumps. In the latter case, it requires some modications to adapt to the dump structure, so you must specify the -k ag when using it on kernel dumps. gdb is not a very good t to kernel: it assumes that its running in process context, and its relatively difcult to get things like stack traces and register contents for processes other than the one (if any) currently running on the processor. There are some macros that help in this area, but its more than a little kludgy.

37

Debugging Kernel Problems

Entering gdb from ddb

In FreeBSD you can build a kernel with support for both ddb and gdb. You can then change backwards and forwards between them. For example, if youre in ddb, you can go to gdb like this:
db> gdb Next trap will enter GDB remote protocol mode db> si step a single instruction to reenter ddb ||||$T0b08:d75124c0;05:249ad9cc;04:209ad9cc;#32. Disconnected. #

The noise at the bottom is the prompt from the gdb stub on the debugged machine: the serial console and gdb are sharing the same line. In this case, you need to exit the terminal emulator session to be able to debug. The input sequence . at the end of the line tells cu to exit, as shown on the following lines. Next, you need to attach from the local gdb, which well see in the next section.

Running serial gdb

On the side of the debugging (local) machine you run gdb in much the same way as you would for a userland program. In the case of the panic we saw above, enter:
$ cd /usr/src/sys/compile/CANBERRA $ gdbk 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 "i386-unknown-freebsd". (kgdb) target remote /dev/cuaa1 connect to remote machine devsw (dev=0x0) at ../../../kern/kern_conf.c:83 83 if (dev->si_devsw) (kgdb)

The rst thing you would do there would be to do a backtrace:

(kgdb) bt #0 devsw (dev=0x0) at ../../../kern/kern_conf.c:83 #1 0xc027d0c7 in cn_devopen (cnd=0xc045cd80, td=0xcc066e04, forceopen=0x0) at ../../../kern/tty_cons.c:344 #2 0xc027d211 in cnopen (dev=0xc0435ec8, flag=0x6, mode=0x2000, td=0xcc066e04) at ../../../kern/tty_cons.c:376 #3 0xc0230f6f in spec_open (ap=0xccd99b50) at ../../../fs/specfs/spec_vnops.c:199 #4 0xc0230e45 in spec_vnoperate (ap=0xccd99b50) at ../../../fs/specfs/spec_vnops.c:119 #5 0xc0320589 in ufs_vnoperatespec (ap=0xccd99b50) at ../../../ufs/ufs/ufs_vnops.c:2676 #6 0xc029984b in vn_open (ndp=0xccd99c2c, flagp=0xccd99bf8, cmode=0x0) at vnode_if.h:159 #7 0xc0294c12 in open (td=0xcc066e04, uap=0xccd99d20) at ../../../kern/vfs_syscalls.c:1099 #8 0xc035aedc in syscall (frame={tf_fs = 0x2f, tf_es = 0x2f, tf_ds = 0x2f, tf_edi = 0xbfbfef34, tf_esi = 0xbfbfef64, tf_ebp = 0xbfbfe9cc, tf_isp = 0xccd99d74, tf_ebx = 0x8054000, tf_edx = 0xf7, tf_ecx = 0x805402f, tf_eax = 0x5, tf_trapno = 0x0, tf_err = 0x2, tf_eip = 0x280aae50, tf_cs = 0x1f, tf_eflags = 0x293, tf_esp = 0xbfbfe960, tf_ss = 0x2f}) at ../../../i386/i386/trap.c:1129 #9 0xc034c28d in syscall_with_err_pushed () #10 0x804b2b5 in ?? ()

Debugging Kernel Problems

#11 0x804abe9 #12 0x804b6fe #13 0x804b7af #14 0x8049fb5 #15 0x8049709 (kgdb) in in in in in ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? () () () () ()

38

This corresponds to the ddb example above. As can be seen, it provides a lot more information. Stack frames 10 to 15 are userland code: on most platforms, userland and kernel share the same address space, so its possible to show the user call stack as well. If necessary, you can also load symbols for the process, assuming you have them available on the debugging machine.

Debugging running systems

For some things, you dont need to stop the kernel. If youre only looking, for example, you can use a debugger on the same system to look at its own kernel. In this case you use the special le /dev/mem instead of dump le. Youre somewhat limited in what you can do: you cant set breakpoints, you cant stop execution, and things can change while youre looking at them. You can change data, but you need to be particularly careful, or not care too much whether you crash the system.

Debugging a running FreeBSD system

# gdb -k /isr/src/sys/i386//MONORCHID/kernel.debug /dev/mem GNU gdb 4.18 ... This GDB was configured as "i386-unknown-freebsd"... IdlePTD at phsyical address 0x004f3000 initial pcb at physical address 0x0e5ccda0 panic messages: ----#0 0xc023a6df in mi_switch () at ../../../kern/kern_synch.c:779 779 cpu_switch(); (kgdb) bt #0 0xc023a6df in mi_switch () at ../../../kern/kern_synch.c:779 #1 0xffffffff in ?? () error reading /proc/95156/mem

You need the -k option to tell gdb that the core dump is really a kernel memory image. The line panic messages is somewhat misleading: the system hasnt panicked. This is also the reason for the empty messages (between the two lines with ---).

Debugging a running NetBSD system

NetBSDs gdb no longer accepts the same syntax as FreeBSD, so on NetBSD you need a slightly different syntax:
# gdb /netbsd no dump ... This GDB was configured as "i386--netbsd"...(no debugging symbols found)... (gdb) target kcore /dev/mem specify the core le #0 0xc01a78f3 in mi_switch () (gdb) bt backtrace #0 0xc01a78f3 in mi_switch ()

39
#1 0xc01a72ca in ltsleep () #2 0xc02d6c81 in uvm_scheduler () #3 0xc019a358 in check_console () (gdb)

Debugging Kernel Problems

In this case, we dont see very much of use, because were using the standard kernel, which is stripped (thus the message above no debugging symbols found). Things look a lot better with symbols:
# gdb /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/KIMCHI/netbsd.gdb ... This GDB was configured as "i386--netbsd"... (gdb) target kcore /dev/mem #0 mi_switch (p=0xc0529be0) at ../../../../kern/kern_synch.c:834 834 microtime(&p->p_cpu->ci_schedstate.spc_runtime); (gdb) bt #0 mi_switch (p=0xc0529be0) at ../../../../kern/kern_synch.c:834 #1 0xc01a72ca in ltsleep (ident=0xc0529be0, priority=4, wmesg=0xc04131e4 "scheduler", timo=0, interlock=0x0) at ../../../../kern/kern_synch.c:.482 #2 0xc02d6c81 in uvm_scheduler () at ../../../../uvm/uvm_glue.c:453 #3 0xc019a358 in check_console (p=0x0) at ../../../../kern/init_main.c:522

Debugging via rewire

Firewire offers new possibilities for remote debugging. On the one hand, it provides a much faster method of remote debugging, though the speed is still limited by the inefciencies of gdb processing. On the other hand, it provides a completely new method to debug systems which have crashed or hung: rewire can access the memory of the remote machine without its intervention, which provides an interface similar to local memory debugging. This promises to be a way of debugging hangs and crashes which previously could not be debugged at all. As with serial debugging, to debug a live system with a rewire link, compile the kernel with the option
options DDB

options GDB_REMOTE_CHAT is not necessary, since the rewire implementation uses separate ports for the console and debug connection. A number of steps must be performed to set up a rewire link:

Ensure that both systems have rewire support, and that the kernel of the remote system includes the dcons and dcons_crom drivers. If they are not compiled into the kernel, load the KLDs:
# kldload firewire

On the remote system only:

Debugging Kernel Problems

# kldload dcons # kldload dcons_crom

40

You should see something like this in the dmesg output of the remote system:
fwohci0: BUS reset fwohci0: node_id=0x8800ffc0, gen=2, non CYCLEMASTER mode firewire0: 2 nodes, maxhop <= 1, cable IRM = 1 firewire0: bus manager 1 firewire0: New S400 device ID:00c04f3226e88061 dcons_crom0: <dcons configuration ROM> on firewire0 dcons_crom0: bus_addr 0x22a000

It is a good idea to load these modules at boot time with the following entry in /boot/loader.conf:
dcons_crom_enable="YES"

This ensures that all three modules are loaded. There is no harm in loading dcons and dcons_crom on the local system, but if you only want to load the rewire module, include the following in /boot/loader.conf:
firewire_enable="YES"

Next, use fwcontrol to nd the rewire node corresponding to the remote machine. On the local machine you might see:
# fwcontrol 2 devices (info_len=2) node EUI64 status 1 0x00c04f3226e88061 0 0 0x000199000003622b 1

The rst node is always the local system, so in this case, node 0 is the remote system. If there are more than two systems, check from the other end to nd which node corresponds to the remote system. On the remote machine, it looks like this:
# fwcontrol 2 devices (info_len=2) node EUI64 status 0 0x000199000003622b 0 1 0x00c04f3226e88061 1

Next, establish a rewire connection with dconschat:

# dconschat -br -G 5556 -t 0x000199000003622b

0x000199000003622b is the EUI64 address of the remote node, as determined from the output of fwcontrol above. When started in this manner, dconschat establishes a local tunnel connection from port localhost:5556 to the remote debugger. You can also establish a console port connection with the -C option to the same invocation dconschat. See the dconschat manpage for further details. The dconschat utility does not return control to the user. It displays error messages and console output for the remote system, so it is a good idea to start it in its own window.

41

Debugging Kernel Problems

Finally, establish connection:

# gdb kernel.debug GNU gdb 5.2.1 (FreeBSD) (political statements omitted) Ready to go. Enter tr to connect to the remote target with /dev/cuaa0, tr /dev/cuaa1 to connect to a different port or trf portno to connect to the remote target with the firewire interface. portno defaults to 5556. Type getsyms after connection to load kld symbols. If youre debugging a local system, you can use kldsyms instead to load the kld symbols. Thats a less obnoxious interface. (gdb) trf 0xc21bd378 in ?? ()

The trf macro assumes a connection on port 5556. If you want to use a different port (by changing the invocation of dconschat above), use the tr macro instead. For example, if you want to use port 4711, run dconschat like this:
# dconschat -br -G 4711 -t 0x000199000003622b

Then establish connection with:

(gdb) tr localhost:4711 0xc21bd378 in ?? ()

Non-cooperative debugging a live system with a remote rewire link

In addition to the conventional debugging via rewire described in the previous section, it is possible to debug a remote system without its cooperation, once an initial connection has been established. This corresponds to debugging a local machine using /dev/mem. It can be very useful if a system crashes and the debugger no longer responds. To use this method, set the sysctl variables hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_hi and hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_lo to the upper and lower halves of the EUI64 ID of the remote system, respectively. From the previous example, the remote machine shows:
# fwcontrol 2 devices (info_len=2) node EUI64 status 0 0x000199000003622b 0 1 0x00c04f3226e88061 1

Enter:
# sysctl -w hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_hi=0x00019900 hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_hi: 0 -> 104704 # sysctl -w hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_lo=0x0003622b hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_lo: 0 -> 221739

Note that the variables must be explicitly stated in hexadecimal. After this, you can examine the remote machines state with the following input:

Debugging Kernel Problems

# gdb -k kernel.debug /dev/fwmem0.0 GNU gdb 5.2.1 (FreeBSD) (messages omitted) Reading symbols from /boot/kernel/dcons.ko...done. Loaded symbols for /boot/kernel/dcons.ko Reading symbols from /boot/kernel/dcons_crom.ko...done. Loaded symbols for /boot/kernel/dcons_crom.ko #0 sched_switch (td=0xc0922fe0) at /usr/src/sys/kern/sched_4bsd.c:621 0xc21bd378 in ?? ()

42

In this case, it is not necessary to load the symbols explicitly. The remote system continues to run.

43

Debugging Kernel Problems

6
Debugging a processor dump
Probably the most common way of debugging is the processor post-mortem dump. After a panic you can save the contents of memory to disk. At boot time you can then save this image to a disk le and use a debugger to nd out what has gone on. Compared to on-line serial debugging, post-mortem debugging has the disadvantage that you cant continue with the execution when you have seen what you can from the present view of the system: its dead. On the other hand, post-mortem debugging eliminates the long delays frequently associated with serial debugging. There are two conguration steps to prepare for dumps:

You must tell the kernel where to write the dump when it panics. By convention its the swap
partition, though theoretically you could dedicate a separate partition for this purpose. This might make sense if there were a post-mortem tool which could analyse the contents of swap: in this case you wouldnt want to overwrite it. Sadly, we currently dont have such a tool. The dump partition needs to be the size of main memory with a little bit extra for a header. It needs to be in one piece: you cant spread a dump over multiple swap partitions, even if theres enough space. We tell the system where to write the dump with the dumpon command:
# dumpon /dev/ad0s1b

On reboot, the startup scripts run savecore, which checks the dump partition for a core dump
and saves it to disk if it does. Obviously it needs to know where to put the resultant dump. By convention, its /var/crash. Theres seldom a good reason to change that. If theres not enough space on the partition, it can be a symbolic link to somewhere where there is. In /etc/rc.conf, set:

Debugging Kernel Problems

dumpdev=/dev/ad0b

44

Saving the dump

When you reboot after a panic, savecore saves the dump to disk. By convention theyre stored in /var/crash. There you might see:
# ls -l total 661 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3 Sep 20 11:12 bounds -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3464574 Sep 16 06:13 kernel.10 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3589033 Sep 18 09:08 kernel.11 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3589033 Sep 19 03:13 kernel.12 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3589033 Sep 20 10:50 kernel.13 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3589033 Sep 20 11:03 kernel.14 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3589033 Sep 20 11:12 kernel.15 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 61 Sep 20 16:13 kernel.debug -> /src/FreeBSD/4.4-RELEASE/src/sys/compile/ECHUNGA/kernel.debug -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 5 Sep 17 1999 minfree -rw------- 1 root wheel 134152192 Sep 18 09:08 vmcore.11 -rw------- 1 root wheel 134152192 Sep 19 03:13 vmcore.12 -rw------- 1 root wheel 134152192 Sep 20 10:50 vmcore.13 -rw------- 1 root wheel 134152192 Sep 20 11:03 vmcore.14 -rw------- 1 root wheel 134152192 Sep 20 11:12 vmcore.15

These les have the following purpose:

vmcore.11 and friends are the individual core images. This directory contains ve dumps,
numbered 11 to 15.

kernel.11 and friends are corresponding copies of the kernel on reboot. Normally theyre the
kernel which crashed, but its possible that they might not be. For example, you might have replaced the kernel in single-user mode after the crash and before rebooting to multi-user mode. Theyre also normally stripped, so theyre not much use for debugging. Recent versions of FreeBSD no longer include this le; see the next entry.

Recent versions of FreeBSD include les with names like info.15. As the name suggests, the
le contains information about the dump. For example:
Good dump found on device /dev/ad0s4b Architecture: i386 Architecture version: 1 Dump length: 134217728B (128 MB) Blocksize: 512 Dumptime: Thu Aug 7 11:01:23 2003 Hostname: zaphod.lemis.com Versionstring: FreeBSD 5.1-BETA #7: Tue Jun 3 18:10:59 CST 2003 [email protected]:/src/FreeBSD/obj/src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/ZAPHOD Panicstring: from debugger Bounds: 0

kernel.debug is a symbolic link to a real debug kernel in the kernel build directory. This is
one way to do it, and it has the advantage that gdb then nds the source les with no further problem. If youre debugging multiple kernels, theres no reason why you shouldnt remove the saved kernels and create symlinks with names like kernel.11 etc.

45

Debugging Kernel Problems

minfree species the minimum amount of space to leave on the le system after saving the
dump. The avoids running out of space on the le system.

bounds is a rather misleading name: it contains the number of the next kernel dump, followed
by a \n character.

Analyzing the dump

When you start kernel gdb against a processor dump, youll see something like this:
# gdb -k kernel.debug vmcore.11 panicstr: general protection fault panic messages: --Fatal trap 9: general protection fault while in kernel mode instruction pointer = 0x8:0xc01c434b stack pointer = 0x10:0xc99f8d0c frame pointer = 0x10:0xc99f8d28 code segment = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 current process = 2638 (find) interrupt mask = net tty bio cam trap number = 9 panic: general protection fault syncing disks... 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 giving up on 6 buffers Uptime: 17h53m13s dumping to dev #ad/1, offset 786560 dump ata0: resetting devices .. done --#0 dumpsys () at ../../kern/kern_shutdown.c:473 473 if (dumping++) { (kgdb)

With the exception of the last three lines, this is the same as what the system prints on the screen when it panics. The last three lines show what the processor was executing at the time of the dump. This information is of marginal importance: it shows the functions which create the core dump. They work, or you wouldnt have the dump. To nd out what really happened, start with a stack backtrace:
(kgdb) bt #0 dumpsys () at ../../kern/kern_shutdown.c:473 #1 0xc01c88bf in boot (howto=256) at ../../kern/kern_shutdown.c:313 #2 0xc01c8ca5 in panic (fmt=0xc03a8cac "%s") at ../../kern/kern_shutdown.c:581 #3 0xc033ab03 in trap_fatal (frame=0xc99f8ccc, eva=0) at ../../i386/i386/trap.c:956 #4 0xc033a4ba in trap (frame={tf_fs = 16, tf_es = 16, tf_ds = 16, tf_edi = -1069794208, tf_esi = -1069630360, tf_ebp = -912290520, tf_isp = -912290568, tf_ebx = -1069794208, tf_edx = 10, tf_ecx = 10, tf_eax = -1, tf_trapno = 9, tf_err = 0, tf_eip = -1071889589, tf_cs = 8, tf_eflags = 66182, tf_esp = 1024, tf_ss = 6864992}) at ../../i386/i386/trap.c:618 #5 0xc01c434b in malloc (size=1024, type=0xc03c3c60, flags=0) at ../../kern/kern_malloc.c:233 #6 0xc01f015c in allocbuf (bp=0xc3a6f7cc, size=1024) at ../../kern/vfs_bio.c:2380 #7 0xc01effa6 in getblk (vp=0xc9642f00, blkno=0, size=1024, slpflag=0, slptimeo=0) at ../../kern/vfs_bio.c:2271

Debugging Kernel Problems

#8 0xc01eded2 in bread (vp=0xc9642f00, blkno=0, size=1024, cred=0x0, bpp=0xc99f8e3c) at ../../kern/vfs_bio.c:504 #9 0xc02d0634 in ffs_read (ap=0xc99f8ea0) at ../../ufs/ufs/ufs_readwrite.c:273 #10 0xc02d734e in ufs_readdir (ap=0xc99f8ef0) at vnode_if.h:334 #11 0xc02d7cd1 in ufs_vnoperate (ap=0xc99f8ef0) at ../../ufs/ufs/ufs_vnops.c:2382 #12 0xc01fbc3b in getdirentries (p=0xc9a53ac0, uap=0xc99f8f80) at vnode_if.h:769 #13 0xc033adb5 in syscall2 (frame={tf_fs = 47, tf_es = 47, tf_ds = 47, tf_edi = 134567680, tf_esi = 134554336, tf_ebp = -1077937404, tf_isp = -912289836, tf_ebx = 672064612, tf_edx = 134554336, tf_ecx = 672137600, tf_eax = 196, tf_trapno = 7, tf_err = 2, tf_eip = 671767876, tf_cs = 31, tf_eflags = 582, tf_esp = -1077937448, tf_ss = 47}) at ../../i386/i386/trap.c:1155 #14 0xc032b825 in Xint0x80_syscall () #15 0x280a1eee in ?? () #16 0x280a173a in ?? () #17 0x804969e in ?? () #18 0x804b550 in ?? () #19 0x804935d in ?? () (kgdb)

46

The most important stack frame is the one below trap. Select it with the frame command, abbreviated to f, and list the code with list (or l):
(kgdb) f 5 #5 0xc01c434b in malloc (size=1024, type=0xc03c3c60, flags=0) at ../../kern/kern_malloc.c:233 233 va = kbp->kb_next; (kgdb) l 228 } 229 freep->next = savedlist; 230 if (kbp->kb_last == NULL) 231 kbp->kb_last = (caddr_t)freep; 232 } 233 va = kbp->kb_next; 234 kbp->kb_next = ((struct freelist *)va)->next; 235 #ifdef INVARIANTS 236 freep = (struct freelist *)va; 237 savedtype = (const char *) freep->type->ks_shortdesc; (kgdb)

You might want to look at the local (automatic) variables. Use info local, which you can abbreviate to i loc:
(kgdb) i loc type = (struct malloc_type *) 0xc03c3c60 kbp = (struct kmembuckets *) 0xc03ebc68 kup = (struct kmemusage *) 0x0 freep = (struct freelist *) 0x0 indx = 10 npg = -1071714292 allocsize = -1069794208 s = 6864992 va = 0xffffffff <Address 0xffffffff out of bounds> cp = 0x0 savedlist = 0x0 ksp = (struct malloc_type *) 0xffffffff (kgdb)

As gdb shows, the line where the problem occurs is 233:

233 va = kbp->kb_next;

Look at the structure kbp:

47
(kgdb) p *kbp $2 = { kb_next = 0xffffffff <Address 0xffffffff out of bounds>, kb_last = 0xc1a31000 "", kb_calls = 83299, kb_total = 1164, kb_elmpercl = 4, kb_totalfree = 178, kb_highwat = 20, kb_couldfree = 3812 }

Debugging Kernel Problems

With this relatively mechanical method, we have found that the crash was in malloc. malloc gets called many times every second. Theres every reason to believe that it works correctly, so its probably not a bug in malloc. More likely its the result of a client of malloc either writing beyond the end of the allocated area, or writing to it after calling free. Finding this kind of problem is particularly difcult: theres no reason to believe that the process or function which trips over this problem has anything to do with the process or function which caused it. In the following sections well look at variants on the problem.

A panic in Vinum
Our Vinum test machine panics at boot time:
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s2a Memory modified at 0xc1958838 after free 0xc1958000(4092) panic: Most recently used by devbuf

The rst thing to do is to look at the back trace. In this case, however, we nd something very similar to the previous example: the process involved is almost certainly not the culprit. Instead, since were working on Vinum, we suspect Vinum. Vinum includes a number of kernel debug tools, including some macros which keep track of memory allocation. One is finfo, which keeps track of recently freed memory areas. Its only enabled on request. Looking at the memory allocation, we see:
(gdb) finfo Block Time 0 19.539380 1 19.547689 2 19.554801 3 19.568804 4 19.568876 5 19.583257 6 19.597787 7 19.598547 8 19.602026 9 19.602936 10 19.606420 11 19.607325 12 19.610766 13 19.611664 14 19.615103 15 19.616040 16 19.619775 17 19.620171 Sequence 8 10 12 14 0 17 19 21 20 23 22 25 24 27 26 29 28 5 show info about freed memory size address line 512 0xc1975c00 318 512 0xc197a000 318 512 0xc197a800 318 512 0xc197ae00 318 1024 0xc1981c00 468 512 0xc1975e00 318 512 0xc1975e00 318 512 0xc197a800 318 256 0xc1991700 598 512 0xc1975c00 318 256 0xc1991400 598 512 0xc197ac00 318 256 0xc1991100 598 512 0xc197ac00 318 256 0xc198dd00 598 512 0xc197ac00 318 256 0xc198da00 598 1024 0xc197ec00 882 file vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c

Debugging Kernel Problems

18 19 20 21 22 23 19.655536 19.659108 19.696490 19.828777 19.828823 19.829590 1 15 2 30 6 4 768 2048 2144 131072 1024 28 0xc1981400 0xc18e5000 0xc1958000 0xc1994000 0xc197f000 0xc18d68a0 845 468 765 974 975 982 vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c

48

The address 0xc1958838 is not in any block freed by Vinum, but its just after the block at sequence number 2. That makes it a lot more suspect than if it were just before an allocated block: most addressing errors go off the end of the data block.
(gdb) meminfo Block Sequence 0 3 1 7 2 9 3 11 4 13 5 16 6 18 7 31 8 32 9 33 10 34 11 35 12 36 13 37 14 38 15 39 16 40 17 41 18 42 19 43 20 44 21 45 22 46 23 47 24 48 25 49 26 50 27 51 28 52 29 53 30 54 31 55 32 56 33 57 34 58 35 59 36 60 37 61 38 62 39 63 40 64 41 65 42 66 43 67 44 68 45 69 46 70 47 71 48 72 49 73 50 74 51 75 52 76 53 77 54 78 55 79 size 3136 256 256 256 256 256 256 2048 1536 16 16 16 16 16 3072 16 16 3072 16 3072 3072 4288 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 address 0xc1957000 0xc1991d00 0xc1991c00 0xc1991b00 0xc1991a00 0xc1991900 0xc1991800 0xc19b7000 0xc19b6800 0xc19885a0 0xc19885c0 0xc19885e0 0xc1988610 0xc1988620 0xc1953000 0xc18d93a0 0xc1988600 0xc1952000 0xc1988690 0xc1951000 0xc1950000 0xc18a7000 0xc1988640 0xc1988670 0xc19886a0 0xc19886f0 0xc19886b0 0xc1988710 0xc1988730 0xc1988750 0xc1988780 0xc19882d0 0xc19887d0 0xc19887a0 0xc1988800 0xc1988810 0xc19887e0 0xc1988840 0xc1988860 0xc18d9ab0 0xc18d9340 0xc18d9e40 0xc0b877d0 0xc18d99c0 0xc18d9b40 0xc19888c0 0xc19888e0 0xc18d9d00 0xc1817cf0 0xc18d9eb0 0xc19881c0 0xc18d9a30 0xc1988580 0xc1988560 0xc1988570 0xc18d9360 line 140 117 117 117 117 117 117 902 120 770 770 770 770 770 1454 770 770 1454 770 1454 120 120 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 770 file vinum.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinummemory.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinummemory.c vinummemory.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c

49
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 0xc1988500 0xc19884c0 0xc1988520 0xc19884e0 0xc19884b0 0xc19884d0 0xc19884a0 770 770 770 770 770 770 224

Debugging Kernel Problems

vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumdaemon.c

(gdb) p/x *0xc1958838 $2 = 0xc1994068

This pointer doesnt point into a Vinum structure. Maybe this isnt Vinum after all? Look at the code round where the block was freed, vinumcong.c line 765:
if (plexno >= vinum_conf.plexes_allocated) EXPAND(PLEX, struct plex, vinum_conf.plexes_allocated, INITIAL_PLEXES); /* Found a plex. Give it an sd structure */ plex = &PLEX[plexno]; /* this one is ours */

The EXPAND macro is effectively the same as realloc. It allocates INITIAL_PLEXES * sizeof (struct plex) more memory and copies the old data to it, then frees the old data; thats the free call we saw. If a pointer remains pointing into the old area, its reasonable for it to go over the end. In this case, the issue is muddied because the memory area has apparently been reallocated in a length of 4096 bytes and then freed again; but this is our luck, because it means that the allocation routines will catch it. Looking at the code, though, youll see that the pointer to the plex is not allocated until after the call to EXPAND. So maybe its from a function which calls it. There are two ways to look at this problem: 1. 2. Look at all the calls and read code to see where something might have happened. Look at what got changed and try to guess what it was.

Which is better? We wont know until weve done both. Finding what changed is relatively easy. First we need to know how long struct plex is. There are a couple of ways of doing this:

Count it in the header les. Good for sleepless nights. Look at the length that was allocated, 2144 bytes. From vinumvar.h we nd:
INITIAL_PLEXES = 8,

So the length of a plex must be 2144 / 8 bytes, or 268 bytes. This method is easier, but it requires nding this denition.

Look at the addresses:

(gdb) p &vinum_conf.plex[0] $5 = (struct plex *) 0xc18a7000 (gdb) p &vinum_conf.plex[1] $6 = (struct plex *) 0xc18a710c

Debugging Kernel Problems What you cant do is:

(gdb) p &vinum_conf.plex[1] - &vinum_conf.plex[0] $7 = 0x1

50

This gives you a result in units of sizeof (struct plex), not bytes. You have to do:
(gdb) p (char*) &vinum_conf.plex[1] - (char *) &vinum_conf.plex[0] $8 = 0x10c

Whichever method you use, we have the length of struct plex, so we can determine which plex entry was affected: its the offset divided by the length, 0x838 / 0x10c, or 7. The offset in the plex is the remainder, 0x838 - 0x10c * 7:
(gdb) p 0x838 - 0x10c * 7 $9 = 0xe4

Thats pretty close to the end of the plex. Looking at the struct, we see:
(gdb) p ((struct plex *) 0xc1958000) [7] $10 = { organization = 3735929054, state = 3735929054, length = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, flags = 0xdeadc0de, stripesize = 0xdeadc0de, sectorsize = 0xdeadc0de, subdisks = 0xdeadc0de, subdisks_allocated = 0xdeadc0de, sdnos = 0xdeadc0de, plexno = 0xdeadc0de, volno = 0xdeadc0de, volplexno = 0xdeadc0de, reads = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, writes = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, bytes_read = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, bytes_written = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, recovered_reads = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, degraded_writes = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, parityless_writes = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, multiblock = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, multistripe = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, sddowncount = 0xdeadc0de, usedlocks = 0xdeadc0de, lockwaits = 0xdeadc0de, checkblock = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, name = "", lock = 0xdeadc0de, lockmtx = { mtx_object = { lo_class = 0xdeadc0de, lo_name = 0xdeadc0de <Address 0xdeadc0de out of bounds>, lo_type = 0xdeadc0de <Address 0xdeadc0de out of bounds>, lo_flags = 0xdeadc0de, lo_list = { tqe_next = 0xc1994068, tqe_prev = 0xdeadc0de }, lo_witness = 0xdeadc0de }, mtx_lock = 0xdeadc0de, mtx_recurse = 0xdeadc0de, mtx_blocked = {

51
tqh_first = 0xdeadc0de, tqh_last = 0xdeadc0de }, mtx_contested = { le_next = 0xdeadc0de, le_prev = 0xdeadc0de } }, dev = 0xdeadc0de }

Debugging Kernel Problems

Thats inside the plexs lock mutex. Nothing touches mutexes except the mutex primitives, so this looks like somewhere a mutex constructor has been handed a stale pointer. That helps us narrow our search:
$ grep -n mtx *.c vinumconfig.c:831: mtx_destroy(&plex->lockmtx); vinumconfig.c:1457: mtx_init(&plex->lockmtx, plex->name, "plex", MTX_DEF); vinumdaemon.c:74: mtx_lock_spin(&sched_lock); vinumdaemon.c:76: mtx_unlock_spin(&sched_lock); vinumlock.c:139: mtx_lock(&plex->lockmtx); vinumlock.c:143: msleep(&plex->usedlocks, &plex->lockmtx, PRIBIO, "vlock", 0); vinumlock.c:171: msleep(lock, &plex->lockmtx, PRIBIO, "vrlock", 0); vinumlock.c:195: mtx_unlock(&plex->lockmtx);

The calls in vinumdaemon.c are for sched_lock, so we can forget them. The others refer to the plex lockmtx, so it might seem that we need to look at them all. But the value that has changed is a list pointer, so its a good choice that this is creating or destroying a mutex. That leaves only the rst two mutexes, in vinumcong.c. Looking at the code round line 831, we nd its in free_plex:
/* * Free an allocated plex entry * and its associated memory areas */ void free_plex(int plexno) { struct plex *plex; plex = &PLEX[plexno]; if (plex->sdnos) Free(plex->sdnos); if (plex->lock) Free(plex->lock); if (isstriped(plex)) mtx_destroy(&plex->lockmtx); destroy_dev(plex->dev); bzero(plex, sizeof(struct plex)); plex->state = plex_unallocated; }

/* and clear it out */

Here, the parameter passed is the plex number, not the plex pointer, which is initialized in the function. Theoretically it could also be a race condition, which would imply a problem with the cong lock. But more important is that the plex lock is being freed immediately before. If it were working on freed memory, the value of plex->lock would be 0xdeadc0de, so it would try to free it and panic right there, since 0xdeadc0de is not a valid address. So it cant be this one.

Debugging Kernel Problems Line 1457 is in config_plex:

if (isstriped(plex)) { plex->lock = (struct rangelock *) Malloc(PLEX_LOCKS * sizeof(struct rangelock)); CHECKALLOC(plex->lock, "vinum: Cant allocate lock table\n"); bzero((char *) plex->lock, PLEX_LOCKS * sizeof(struct rangelock)); mtx_init(&plex->lockmtx, plex->name, "plex", MTX_DEF); }

52

Again, if we had been through this code, we would have allocated a lock table, but theres no evidence of that. We could go on looking at the other instances, but its unlikely that any of those functions would change the linkage. What does change the linkage is the creation or destruction of other mutexes. This is a basic problem with the approach: you cant move an element in a linked list without changing the linkage. Thats the bug. So how do we solve the problem? Again, there are two possibilities:

When moving the plex table, adjust the mutex linkage. Dont move the mutexes.
Lets look at how this mutex gets used, in lock_plex:
/* * we cant use 0 as a valid address, so * increment all addresses by 1. */ stripe++; mtx_lock(&plex->lockmtx); /* Wait here if the table is full */ while (plex->usedlocks == PLEX_LOCKS) /* all in use */ msleep(&plex->usedlocks, &plex->lockmtx, PRIBIO, "vlock", 0);

In older versions of FreeBSD, as well as NetBSD and OpenBSD, the corresponding code is:
/* * we cant use 0 as a valid address, so * increment all addresses by 1. */ stripe++; /* * We give the locks back from an interrupt * context, so we need to raise the spl here. */ s = splbio(); /* Wait here if the table is full */ while (plex->usedlocks == PLEX_LOCKS) tsleep(&plex->usedlocks, PRIBIO, "vlock", 0); /* all in use */

In other words, the mutex simply replaces an splbio call, which is a no-op in FreeBSD release 5. So why one mutex per plex? Its simply an example of ner-grained locking. There are two ways to handle this issue:

Use a single mutex for all plexes. Thats the closest approximation to the original, but it can
mean unnecessary waits: the only thing we want to avoid in this function is having two callers locking the same plex, not two callers locking different plexes.

53

Debugging Kernel Problems

Use a pool of mutexes. Each plex is allocated one of a number of mutexes. If more than one
plex uses the same mutex, theres a possibility of unnecessary delay, but its not as much as if all plexes used the same mutex. I chose the second way. In Vinum startup, I added this code:
#define MUTEXNAMELEN 16 char mutexname[MUTEXNAMELEN]; #if PLEXMUTEXES > 10000 #error Increase size of MUTEXNAMELEN #endif ... for (i = 0; i < PLEXMUTEXES; i++) { snprintf(mutexname, MUTEXNAMELEN, "vinumplex%d", i); mtx_init(&plexmutex[i], mutexname, "plex", MTX_DEF); }

Then the code in config_plex became:

if (isstriped(plex)) { plex->lock = (struct rangelock *) Malloc(PLEX_LOCKS * sizeof(struct rangelock)); CHECKALLOC(plex->lock, "vinum: Cant allocate lock table\n"); bzero((char *) plex->lock, PLEX_LOCKS * sizeof(struct rangelock)); plex->lockmtx = &plexmutex[plexno % PLEXMUTEXES]; /* use this mutex for locking */ }

Since the mutexes no longer belong to a single plex, theres no need to destroy them when destroying the plex; instead, theyre destroyed when unloading the Vinum module.

Another panic
After xing that, our Vinum test system panics again, this time during boot:
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s2a swapon: adding /dev/ad0s4b as swap device Automatic boot in progress... /dev/ad0s2a: 38440 files, 381933 used, 1165992 free (21752 frags, 143030 blocks, 1.4% fragmentation) /dev/ad0s3a: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s3a: clean, 1653026 free (46890 frags, 200767 blocks, 1.5% fragmentation) /dev/ad0s1a: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1a: clean, 181000 free (5352 frags, 21956 blocks, 0.3% fragmentation) Memory modified at 0xc199657c after free 0xc1996000(2044): deafc0de panic: Most recently used by devbuf

Hey, thats exactly the same panic as before. Maybe the bug didnt get xed after all? This system is set up with remote debugging, so next we see:
Debugger("panic") Stopped at Debugger+0x54 xchgl %ebx, in_Debugger.0 db> gdb Next trap will enter GDB remote protocol mode db> s (nothing more appears here)

Debugging Kernel Problems

54

At this point, the system is trying to access the remote debugger. On the system connected to the other end of the debugger cable, we enter:
# cd /src/FreeBSD/obj/src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/GENERIC # gdb ... Debugger (msg=0x12 <Address 0x12 out of bounds>) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src /sys/i386/i386/db_interface.c:330 330 } warning: Unable to find dynamic linker breakpoint function. GDB will be unable to debug shared library initializers and track explicitly loaded dynamic code. warning: shared library handler failed to enable breakpoint

The messages above come from this particular version of the kernel. In a development kernel, youre likely to see things like this. Unless they stop you debugging, theyre probably not worth worrying about.
Id Refs Address Size Name 1 2 0xc0100000 59f5dc kernel 2 1 0xc06a0000 c84cc vinum.ko Select the list above with the mouse, paste into the screen and then press D. Yes, this is annoying. 2 1 0xc06a0000 c84cc vinum.ko add symbol table from file "/src/FreeBSD/obj/src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/GEN ERIC/modules/src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/modules/vinum/vinum.ko.debug" at .text_addr = 0xc06a4920 .data_addr = 0xc06b5000 .bss_addr = 0xc06b5400

The output above comes from the FreeBSD debugging macros in /usr/src/tools/debugscripts. Currently the only way to load the symbols is to use the mouse to copy and paste (or type in manually if youre using a non-graphics terminal). The gdb startup calls a macro asf which calls the program asf to interpret the information about the kld s and produce a command le to load the correct symbol information, then loads it. This is what causes the subsequent output. The cut and paste is necessary because theres no way to pass parameters from gdb to the shell script. Traditionally, the rst thing you do with a panic is to see where it happens. Thats less important with this bug, because it refers to a problem which has happened long before, but well do it anyway:
(gdb) bt #0 Debugger (msg=0x12 <Address 0x12 out of bounds>) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/i386/i386/db_interface.c:330 #1 0xc031294b in panic (fmt=0x1 <Address 0x1 out of bounds>) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:527 #2 0xc0462137 in mtrash_ctor (mem=0xc1996000, size=0x20, arg=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/vm/uma_dbg.c:138 #3 0xc04609ff in uma_zalloc_arg (zone=0xc0b65240, udata=0x0, flags=0x2) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/vm/uma_core.c:1366 #4 0xc0307614 in malloc (size=0xc0b65240, type=0xc0557300, flags=0x2) at uma.h:229 #5 0xc035a1ff in allocbuf (bp=0xc3f0a420, size=0x800) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPH OD/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:2723 #6 0xc0359f0c in getblk (vp=0xc1a1936c, blkno=0x0, size=0x800, slpflag=0x0, slptimeo =0x0, flags=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:2606 #7 0xc0356732 in breadn (vp=0xc1a1936c, blkno=0x2000000012, size=0x12, rablkno=0x0, rabsize=0x0, cnt=0x0, cred=0x0, bpp=0x12) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:701 #8 0xc03566dc in bread (vp=0x12, blkno=0x2000000012, size=0x12, cred=0x12, bpp=0x12)

55

Debugging Kernel Problems

at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:683 0xc043586f in ffs_blkatoff (vp=0xc1a1936c, offset=0x0, res=0x0, bpp=0xcccb3988) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/ufs/ffs/ffs_subr.c:91 #10 0xc043f5a7 in ufs_lookup (ap=0xcccb3ab8) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys /ufs/ufs/ufs_lookup.c:266 #11 0xc0446dd8 in ufs_vnoperate (ap=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/ufs /ufs/ufs_vnops.c:2787 #12 0xc035d19c in vfs_cache_lookup (ap=0x12) at vnode_if.h:82 #13 0xc0446dd8 in ufs_vnoperate (ap=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/ufs /ufs/ufs_vnops.c:2787 #14 0xc0361e92 in lookup (ndp=0xcccb3c24) at vnode_if.h:52 #15 0xc036188e in namei (ndp=0xcccb3c24) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/ker n/vfs_lookup.c:181 #16 0xc036ee32 in lstat (td=0xc199b980, uap=0xcccb3d10) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/kern/vfs_syscalls.c:1719 #17 0xc0497d7e in syscall (frame= {tf_fs = 0x2f, tf_es = 0x2f, tf_ds = 0x2f, tf_edi = 0xbfbffda8, tf_esi = 0xbfbf fda0, tf_ebp = 0xbfbffd48, tf_isp = 0xcccb3d74, tf_ebx = 0xbfbffe49, tf_edx = 0xfffff fff, tf_ecx = 0x2, tf_eax = 0xbe, tf_trapno = 0xc, tf_err = 0x2, tf_eip = 0x804ac0b, tf_cs = 0x1f, tf_eflags = 0x282, tf_esp = 0xbfbffcbc, tf_ss = 0x2f}) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:1025 #18 0xc048724d in Xint0x80_syscall () at {standard input}:138 #19 0x080483b6 in ?? () #20 0x08048145 in ?? () #9

In this case, about all we can see is that the backtrace has nothing to do with Vinum. The rst frame is always in Debugger, and since this is a panic, the second frame is panic. The third frame is the frame which called panic. We can look at it in more detail:
(gdb) f 2 select frame 2 #2 0xc0462137 in mtrash_ctor (mem=0xc1996000, size=0x20, arg=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/vm/uma_dbg.c:138 138 panic("Most recently used by %s\n", (*ksp == NULL)? (gdb) l list code 133 134 for (p = mem; cnt > 0; cnt--, p++) 135 if (*p != uma_junk) { 136 printf("Memory modified at %p after free %p(%d): %x\n", 137 p, mem, size, *p); 138 panic("Most recently used by %s\n", (*ksp == NULL)? 139 "none" : (*ksp)->ks_shortdesc); 140 } 141 } 142 (gdb) i loc show local variables ksp = (struct malloc_type **) 0xc19967fc p = (u_int32_t *) 0x0 cnt = 0x12

The value of the pointer p is important. But how can it be 0? We just printed the message of line 136:
Memory modified at 0xc199657c after free 0xc1996000(2044): deafc0de

This is a problem with the optimizer. On line 138, the call to panic, the pointer p is no longer needed, and the optimizer has used the register for something else. This is one of the reasons why the message prints out the value of p. So where did the problem happen? Were hacking on Vinum, so its reasonable to assume that its related to Vinum. In debug mode, Vinum maintains statistics about memory allocations and frees. Lets take a look at them with some of the the Vinum debug macros:

Debugging Kernel Problems

(gdb) meminfo Block Time 0 18.987686 1 19.491101 2 19.504050 3 19.507847 4 19.523213 5 19.530848 6 19.537997 7 19.565260 8 19.599982 9 19.600115 10 19.600170 11 19.600215 12 19.600263 13 19.600307 14 19.600368 15 19.600408 16 19.600453 17 19.600508 18 19.600546 19 19.600601 20 19.601170 21 19.637070 22 19.637122 23 19.637145 24 19.637166 25 19.637186 26 19.637207 27 19.637227 28 19.637247 29 19.637268 30 19.673860 31 19.673884 32 19.673905 33 19.673925 34 19.673946 35 19.673966 36 19.673988 37 19.674009 38 19.710319 39 19.710343 40 19.710364 41 19.710385 42 19.710406 43 19.710427 44 19.710448 45 19.710469 46 19.740424 47 19.740448 48 19.740469 49 19.740490 50 19.740511 51 19.740532 52 19.740554 53 19.740576 54 19.778006 55 19.778031 56 19.778052 57 19.778074 58 19.778095 59 19.778116 60 19.778138 61 19.778159 62 19.780088 (gdb) finfo Block Time 0 19.501059 1 19.505499 2 19.519560 3 19.527459 look at currently allocated memory size address line 3136 0xc1958000 160 256 0xc1991d00 117 256 0xc1991c00 117 256 0xc1991b00 117 256 0xc1991a00 117 256 0xc1991900 117 256 0xc1991800 117 2048 0xc1995800 902 1536 0xc1995000 841 16 0xc19885a0 768 16 0xc19885c0 768 16 0xc19885e0 768 16 0xc1988610 768 16 0xc1988620 768 3072 0xc1954000 1450 16 0xc18d93a0 768 16 0xc1988600 768 3072 0xc1953000 1450 16 0xc1988690 768 3072 0xc1952000 1450 3072 0xc1951000 468 3520 0xc1950000 763 16 0xc1988640 768 16 0xc1988670 768 16 0xc19886a0 768 16 0xc19886f0 768 16 0xc19886b0 768 16 0xc1988710 768 16 0xc1988730 768 16 0xc1988750 768 16 0xc1988780 768 16 0xc19882d0 768 16 0xc19887d0 768 16 0xc19887a0 768 16 0xc1988800 768 16 0xc1988810 768 16 0xc19887e0 768 16 0xc1988840 768 16 0xc1988860 768 16 0xc18d9ab0 768 16 0xc18d95c0 768 16 0xc18d9e40 768 16 0xc0b877d0 768 16 0xc18d99c0 768 16 0xc18d9b40 768 16 0xc19888c0 768 16 0xc19888e0 768 16 0xc18d9d00 768 16 0xc1988100 768 16 0xc18d9eb0 768 16 0xc1988190 768 16 0xc18d9a30 768 16 0xc1988580 768 16 0xc1988560 768 16 0xc1988570 768 16 0xc18d9360 768 16 0xc1988500 768 16 0xc19884c0 768 16 0xc1988520 768 16 0xc19884e0 768 16 0xc19884b0 768 16 0xc19884d0 768 16 0xc19884a0 224 look at already freed memory Sequence size address line 8 512 0xc1975c00 318 10 512 0xc1975e00 318 12 512 0xc197ac00 318 14 512 0xc18dac00 318

56

Sequence 3 7 9 11 13 16 18 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

file vinum.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumdaemon.c file vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c

57
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 19.527834 19.534994 19.542243 19.543044 19.546529 19.547444 19.550881 19.551790 19.555305 19.556213 19.559655 19.560516 19.564290 19.564687 19.600004 19.601196 19.637102 19.779320 19.779366 19.780113 0 17 19 21 20 23 22 25 24 27 26 29 28 5 1 15 2 30 6 4 1024 512 512 512 256 512 256 512 256 512 256 512 256 1024 768 2048 1760 131072 1024 28 0xc1981c00 0xc197a400 0xc197a000 0xc18dac00 0xc1991700 0xc1975e00 0xc1991400 0xc1975c00 0xc1991100 0xc1975c00 0xc198dd00 0xc1975c00 0xc198da00 0xc197ec00 0xc1981400 0xc1996000 0xc18e5000 0xc1998000 0xc197f000 0xc18d68a0

Debugging Kernel Problems

468 318 318 318 596 318 596 318 596 318 596 318 596 882 841 468 763 966 967 974 vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumconfig.c vinumio.c vinumio.c vinumio.c

The time in the second column is in time_t format. Normally it would be a very large number, the number of seconds and microseconds since 1 January 1970 0:0 UTC, but at this point during booting the system doesnt know the time yet, and it is in fact the time since starting the kernel. Looking at the free info table, its clear that yes, indeed, this block of memory was allocated to Vinum until time 19.601196. It looks as if something was left pointing into the block of memory after its freed. The obvious thing to do is to check what it was used for. Looking at line 468 of vinumcong.c, we see:
if (driveno >= vinum_conf.drives_allocated) /* weve used all our allocation */ EXPAND(DRIVE, struct drive, vinum_conf.drives_allocated, INITIAL_DRIVES); /* got a drive entry. Make it pretty */ drive = &DRIVE[driveno];

The EXPAND macro is effectively the same as realloc. It allocates INITIAL_DRIVES * sizeof (struct drive) more memory and copies the old data to it, then frees the old data; thats the free call we saw. In the meminfo output, we see at time 19.601170 (26 s earlier) an allocation of 3072 bytes, which is the replacement area. Looking at the code, though, youll see that the pointer to the drive is not allocated until after the call to EXPAND. So maybe its from a function which calls it. How do we nd which functions call it? We could go through manually and check, but that can rapidly become a problem. It could be worthwhile nding out what has changed. The word which has been modied has only a single bit changed: 0xdeadc0de became 0xdeafc0de, so were probably looking at a logical bit set operation which or s 0x20000 with the previous value. But whats the value? Its part of the drive, but which part? The memory area is of type struct drive [], and it contains information for a number of drives. The rst thing to do is to nd which drive this error belongs to. We need to do a bit of arithmetic. First, nd out how long a drive entry is. We can do that by comparing the address of the start of the area with the address of the second drive entry (drive [1]):
(gdb) p &((struct drive *) 0xc1996000)[1] $2 = (struct drive *) 0xc1996100

Debugging Kernel Problems

58

So struct drive is exactly 256 bytes long. That means that our fault address 0xc199657c is in plex 5 at offset 0x7c. We can look at the entry like this:
(gdb) p ((struct drive *) 0xc1996000)[5] $3 = { devicename = "", label = { sysname = "", name = "", date_of_birth = { tv_sec = 0xdeadc0de, tv_usec = 0xdeadc0de }, last_update = { tv_sec = 0xdeadc0de, tv_usec = 0xdeadc0de }, drive_size = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de }, state = 3735929054, flags = 0xdeafc0de, subdisks_allocated = 0xdeadc0de, subdisks_used = 0xdeadc0de, blocksize = 0xdeadc0de, pid = 0xdeadc0de, sectors_available = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, secsperblock = 0xdeadc0de, lasterror = 0xdeadc0de, driveno = 0xdeadc0de, opencount = 0xdeadc0de, reads = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, writes = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, bytes_read = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, bytes_written = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, active = 0xdeadc0de, maxactive = 0xdeadc0de, freelist_size = 0xdeadc0de, freelist_entries = 0xdeadc0de, freelist = 0xdeadc0de, sectorsize = 0xdeadc0de, mediasize = 0xdeadc0dedeadc0de, dev = 0xdeadc0de, lockfilename = "", lockline = 0xdeadc0de }

Theres a problem here: some of the elds are not represented in hex. The device name is in text, so it looks completely different. We cant rely on nding our 0xdeafc0de here, and looking at the output makes your eyes go funny. About the only alternative we have is something approximating to a binary search:
(gdb) p &((struct drive *) 0xc1996000)[5].writes $4 = (u_int64_t *) 0xc19965b0 (gdb) p &((struct drive *) 0xc1996000)[5].state $5 = (enum drivestate *) 0xc1996578 (gdb) p &((struct drive *) 0xc1996000)[5].flags $6 = (int *) 0xc199657c (gdb) p ((struct drive *) 0xc1996000)[5].flags $7 = 0xdeafc0de

So the eld is flags. Looking back shows that yes, thats the value, so we didnt need to do this search. In fact, though, after a few hours of this sort of stuff, its easier to do the search than run through output which may or may not contain the information youre looking for.

59

Debugging Kernel Problems

It makes sense that the problem is in flags: its a collection of bits, so setting or resetting individual bits is a fairly typical access mode. Whats 0x20000? The bits are dened in vinumobj.h :
/* * Flags for all objects. Most of them only apply * to specific objects, but we currently have * space for all in any 32 bit flags word. */ enum objflags { VF_LOCKED = 1, /* somebody has locked access to this object */ VF_LOCKING = 2, /* we want access to this object */ VF_OPEN = 4, /* object has openers */ VF_WRITETHROUGH = 8, /* volume: write through */ VF_INITED = 0x10, /* unit has been initialized */ VF_WLABEL = 0x20, /* label area is writable */ VF_LABELLING = 0x40, /* unit is currently being labelled */ VF_WANTED = 0x80, /* someone is waiting to obtain a lock */ VF_RAW = 0x100, /* raw volume (no file system) */ VF_LOADED = 0x200, /* module is loaded */ VF_CONFIGURING = 0x400, /* somebody is changing the config */ VF_WILL_CONFIGURE = 0x800, /* somebody wants to change the config */ VF_CONFIG_INCOMPLETE = 0x1000, /* havent finished changing the config */ VF_CONFIG_SETUPSTATE = 0x2000, /* set a volume up if all plexes are empty */ VF_READING_CONFIG = 0x4000, /* were reading config database from disk */ VF_FORCECONFIG = 0x8000, /* configure drives even with different names */ VF_NEWBORN = 0x10000, /* for objects: weve just created it */ VF_CONFIGURED = 0x20000, /* for drives: we read the config */ VF_STOPPING = 0x40000, /* for vinum_conf: stop on last close */ VF_DAEMONOPEN = 0x80000, /* the daemon has us open (only superdev) */ VF_CREATED = 0x100000, /* for volumes: freshly created, more then new */ VF_HOTSPARE = 0x200000, /* for drives: use as hot spare */ VF_RETRYERRORS = 0x400000, /* dont down subdisks on I/O errors */ VF_HASDEBUG = 0x800000, /* set if we support debug */ };

So our bit is VF_CONFIGURED. Where does it get set?

$ grep -n VF_CONFIGURED *.c vinumio.c:843: else if (drive->flags & VF_CONFIGURED) vinumio.c:868: else if (drive->flags & VF_CONFIGURED) vinumio.c:963: drive->flags |= VF_CONFIGURED;

The last line is the only place which modies the ags. Line 963 of vinumio.c is in the function vinum_scandisk. This function rst builds up the drive list, a drive at a time, paying great attention to not assign any pointers. Once the list is complete and not going to change, it goes through a second loop and reads the conguration from the drives. Heres the second loop:
for (driveno = 0; driveno < gooddrives; driveno++) { /* now include the config */ drive = &DRIVE[drivelist[driveno]]; /* point to the drive */ if (firsttime && (driveno == 0)) /* weve never configured before, */ log(LOG_INFO, "vinum: reading configuration from %s\n", drive->devicename); else log(LOG_INFO, "vinum: updating configuration from %s\n", drive->devicename); if (drive->state == drive_up) /* Read in both copies of the configuration information */ error = read_drive(drive, config_text, MAXCONFIG * 2, VINUM_CONFIG_OFFSET); else { error = EIO; printf("vinum_scandisk: %s is %s\n", drive->devicename, drive_state(drive->state)); }

Debugging Kernel Problems

60

if (error != 0) { log(LOG_ERR, "vinum: Cant read device %s, error %d\n", drive->devicename, error); free_drive(drive); /* give it back */ status = error; } /* * At this point, check that the two copies * are the same, and do something useful if * not. In particular, consider which is * newer, and what this means for the * integrity of the data on the drive. */ else { vinum_conf.drives_used++; /* another drive in use */ /* Parse the configuration, and add it to the global configuration */ for (cptr = config_text; *cptr != \0;) { /* love this style(9) */ volatile int parse_status; /* return value from parse_config */ for (eptr = config_line; (*cptr != \n) && (*cptr != \0);) *eptr++ = *cptr++; /* until the end of the line */ *eptr = \0; /* and delimit */ if (setjmp(command_fail) == 0) { /* come back here on error and continue */ /* parse the config line */ parse_status = parse_config(config_line, &keyword_set, 1); if (parse_status < 0) { /* error in config */ /* * This config should have been parsed * in user space. If we run into * problems here, something serious is * afoot. Complain and let the user * snarf the config to see whats * wrong. */ log(LOG_ERR, "vinum: Config error on %s, aborting integration\n", drive->devicename); free_drive(drive); /* give it back */ status = EINVAL; } } while (*cptr == \n) cptr++; /* skip to next line */ } } drive->flags |= VF_CONFIGURED; } /* this drives configuration is complete */

Theres nothing there which reaches out and grabs you. You could read the code and nd out whats going on (probably the better choice in this particular case), but you could also nd out where get_empty_drive is being called from. To do this, reboot the machine and go into ddb before Vinum starts. To do this, interrupt the boot sequence and enter:
OK boot -d

As soon as the system has enough context, it goes into the debugger. Look for a place to put a breakpoint:
(gdb) 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 l get_empty_drive } /* Get an empty drive entry from the drive table */ int get_empty_drive(void) { int driveno; struct drive *drive;

61
460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471

Debugging Kernel Problems

/* first see if we have one which has been deallocated */ for (driveno = 0; driveno < vinum_conf.drives_allocated; driveno++) { if (DRIVE[driveno].state == drive_unallocated) /* bingo */ break; } if (driveno >= vinum_conf.drives_allocated) /* weve used all our allocation */ EXPAND(DRIVE, struct drive, vinum_conf.drives_allocated, INITIAL_DRIVES); /* got a drive entry. Make it pretty */ drive = &DRIVE[driveno];

This function gets called many times. In FreeBSD its 35 times for every disk (four slices and compatibility slice, seven partitions per slice). This code is meticulously careful not to assign any pointers:
for (slice = 1; slice < 5; slice++) for (part = a; part < i; part++) { if (part != c) { /* dont do the c partition */ snprintf(np, partnamelen, "s%d%c", slice, part); drive = check_drive(partname); /* try to open it */ if (drive) { /* got something, */ if (drive->flags & VF_CONFIGURED) /* already read this config, */ log(LOG_WARNING, "vinum: already read config from %s\n", /* say so */ drive->label.name); else { if (gooddrives == drives) /* ran out of entries */ EXPAND(drivelist, int, drives, drives); /* double the size */ drivelist[gooddrives] = drive->driveno; /* keep the drive index */ drive->flags &= VF_NEWBORN; /* which is no longer newly born */ gooddrives++; } } } }

After lots of code reading, its still not clear how this could cause the kind of corruption were looking for. The problem is obviously related to expanding the table, so the obvious place to put the breakpoint on the macro EXPAND on line 468:
(gdb) b 468 set a breakpoint on the EXPAND call Breakpoint 1 at 0xc06a600f: file /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev/vinum/vinum config.c, line 468. (gdb) c Continuing. Program received signal SIGTRAP, Trace/breakpoint trap. Debugger (msg=0x12 <Address 0x12 out of bounds>) at atomic.h:260 260 ATOMIC_STORE_LOAD(int, "cmpxchgl %0,%1", "xchgl %1,%0"); (gdb) bt nd how we got here Breakpoint 1, 0xc06a6010 in get_empty_drive () at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sy s/dev/vinum/vinumconfig.c:468 468 EXPAND(DRIVE, struct drive, vinum_conf.drives_allocated, INITIAL_DRIVES); (gdb) bt #0 0xc06a6010 in get_empty_drive () at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev/vinu m/vinumconfig.c:468 #1 0xc06a60f9 in find_drive (name=0xc199581a "virtual", create=0x1) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev/vinum/vinumconfig.c:505 #2 0xc06a7217 in config_subdisk (update=0x1) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys /dev/vinum/vinumconfig.c:1157

Debugging Kernel Problems

62

#3 0xc06a7ebe in parse_config (cptr=0x700 <Address 0x700 out of bounds>, keyset=0x700 , update=0x1) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev/vinum/vinumconfig.c:1641 #4 0xc06abdc5 in vinum_scandisk (devicename=0xc18d68a0 "da5 da4 da3 da2 da1 da0 ad0") at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev/vinum/vinumio.c:942 #5 0xc06a4c65 in vinumattach (dummy=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev /vinum/vinum.c:176 #6 0xc06a4f6d in vinum_modevent (mod=0xc0b89f00, type=1792, unused=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev/vinum/vinum.c:277 #7 0xc0308541 in module_register_init (arg=0xc06b5054) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPH OD/src/sys/kern/kern_module.c:107 #8 0xc02ed275 in mi_startup () at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/kern/init_mai n.c:214

This shows that we got to get_empty_drive from find_drive. Why?

486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 509 510 511 512 int find_drive(const char *name, int create) { int driveno; struct drive *drive; if (name != NULL) { for (driveno = 0; driveno < vinum_conf.drives_allocated; driveno++) { drive = &DRIVE[driveno]; /* point to drive */ if ((drive->label.name[0] != ) /* it has a name */ &&(strcmp(drive->label.name, name) == 0) /* and its this one */ &&(drive->state > drive_unallocated)) /* and its a real one: found */ return driveno; } } /* the drive isnt in the list. Add it if he wants */ if (create == 0) /* dont want to create */ return -1; /* give up */ driveno = get_empty_drive(); drive = &DRIVE[driveno]; if (name != NULL) strlcpy(drive->label.name, name, sizeof(drive->label.name)); drive->state = drive_referenced; return driveno;

/* put in its name */ /* in use, nothing worthwhile */ /* return the index */

So were trying to nd a drive, but it doesnt exist. Looking at config_subdisk, we nd were in a case statement:
1151 1152 1153 case kw_drive: sd->driveno = find_drive(token[++parameter], 1); /* insert info */ break;

This is part of the cong line parsing. The cong line might look something like:
sd usr.p0.s0 drive virtual size 43243243222s

Unfortunately, Vinum doesnt know a drive called virtual: maybe it was a drive which has failed. In such a case, Vinum creates a drive entry with the state referenced. Looking further down the stack, we see our vinum_scandisk, as expected:
(gdb) f 4 #4 0xc06abdc5 in vinum_scandisk (devicename=0xc18d68a0 "da5 da4 da3 da2 da1 da0 ad0") at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-ZAPHOD/src/sys/dev/vinum/vinumio.c:942

63
942

Debugging Kernel Problems

parse_status = parse_config(config_line, &keyword_set, 1);

Looking back to vinum_scandisk, we see:

else { vinum_conf.drives_used++; /* another drive in use */ /* Parse the configuration, and add it to the global configuration */ for (cptr = config_text; *cptr != \0;) { volatile int parse_status; /* return value from parse_config */ for (eptr = config_line; (*cptr != \n) && (*cptr != \0);) *eptr++ = *cptr++; /* until the end of the line */ *eptr = \0; /* and delimit */ if (setjmp(command_fail) == 0) { /* come back here on error and continue */ (line 942) parse_status = parse_config(config_line, &keyword_set, 1); /* parse config */ ... error check code } } } drive->flags |= VF_CONFIGURED; /* this drives configuration is complete */ }

The problem here is that parse_config changes the location of the drive, but the drive pointer remains pointing to the old location. At the end of the example, it then sets the VF_CONFIGURED bit. Its not immediately apparent that the pointer is reset in a function called indirectly from parse_config, particularly in a case like this where parse_config does not normally allocate a drive. Its easy to look for the bug where the code is obviously creating new drive entries. Once we know this, solving the problem is trivial: reinitialize the drive pointer after the call to parse_config:
@@ -940,6 +940,14 @@ *eptr = \0; /* and delimit */ if (setjmp(command_fail) == 0) { /* come back here on error and continue */ parse_status = parse_config(config_line, &keyword_set, 1); /* parse config */ + /* + * parse_config recognizes referenced + * drives and builds a drive entry for + * them. This may expand the drive + * table, thus invalidating the pointer. + */ + drive = &DRIVE[drivelist[driveno]]; /* point to the drive */ + if (parse_status < 0) { /* error in config */ /* * This config should have been parsed

Debugging Kernel Problems

64

7
Spontaneous traps
Sometimes youll see a backtrace like this:
Fatal trap 12: page fault fault virtual address = fault code = instruction pointer = stack pointer = frame pointer = code segment = = processor eflags = current process = trap number = panic: page fault while in kernel mode 0xb supervisor write, page not present 0x8:0xdd363ccc 0x10:0xdd363ca8 0x10:0xdd363ce0 base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 64462 (emacs) 12

syncing disks... panic: bremfree: bp 0xce5f915c not locked Uptime: 42d17h14m15s pfs_vncache_unload(): 2 entries remaining /dev/vmmon: Module vmmon: unloaded Dumping 512 MB ata0: resetting devices .. done

This register dump looks confusing, but it doesnt give very much information. Its processor specic, so non-Intel traps can look quite different. What we see is:

The trap was type 12, described as page fault while in kernel mode. In kernel
mode you cant take a page fault, so this is fatal.

The fault virtual address is the address of the memory reference which generated the page
fault. In this case, 0xb, its almost certainly due to a NULL pointer dereference: a pointer was set to 0 instead of a valid address.

The fault code gives more information about the trap. In this case, we see that it was a write
access.

65

Debugging Kernel Problems

The instruction pointer (eip) address has two parts: the segment (0x8) and the address
(0xdd363ccc). In the case of a page fault, this is the address of the instruction which caused the fault.

The stack pointer (esp) and frame pointer (ebp) are of limited use. Without a processor
dump, its not likely to be of much use, though in this case we note that the instruction pointer address is between the stack pointer and frame pointer address, which suggests that something has gone very wrong. The fact that the registers point to different segments is currently not of importance in this FreeBSD dump, since the two segments overlap completely.

The remaining information is of marginal use. Weve already seen the trap number, and under these circumstances youd expect the panic message you see. The name of the process may help, though in general no user process (not even Emacs) should cause a panic.

The message syncing disks... does not belong to the register dump. But then we get a
second panic, almost certainly a result of the panic. To nd out what really went on, we need to look at the dump. Looking at the stack trace, we see:
(kgdb) bt #0 doadump () at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:223 #1 0xc02e238a in boot (howto=0x104) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:355 #2 0xc02e25d3 in panic () at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:508 #3 0xc0322407 in bremfree (bp=0xce5f915c) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:632 #4 0xc0324e10 in getblk (vp=0xc42e5000, blkno=0x1bde60, size=0x4000, slpflag=0x0, slptimeo=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:2344 #5 0xc032253a in breadn (vp=0xc42e5000, blkno=0x0, size=0x0, rablkno=0x0, rabsize=0x0, cnt=0x0, cred=0x0, bpp=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:690 #6 0xc03224ec in bread (vp=0x0, blkno=0x0, size=0x0, cred=0x0, bpp=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c:672 #7 0xc03efc46 in ffs_update (vp=0xc43fb250, waitfor=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/ufs/ffs/ffs_inode.c:102 #8 0xc040364f in ffs_fsync (ap=0xdd363ae0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/ufs/ffs/ffs_vnops.c:315 #9 0xc04028be in ffs_sync (mp=0xc42d1200, waitfor=0x2, cred=0xc1616f00, td=0xc0513040) at vnode_if.h:612 #10 0xc0336268 in sync (td=0xc0513040, uap=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/vfs_syscalls.c:130 #11 0xc02e1fdc in boot (howto=0x100) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:264 #12 0xc02e25d3 in panic () at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:508 #13 0xc045f922 in trap_fatal (frame=0xdd363c68, eva=0x0) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:846 #14 0xc045f602 in trap_pfault (frame=0xdd363c68, usermode=0x0, eva=0xb) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:760 #15 0xc045f10d in trap (frame= {tf_fs = 0x18, tf_es = 0x10, tf_ds = 0x10, tf_edi = 0xc5844a80, tf_esi = 0xdd36 3d10, tf_ebp = 0xdd363ce0, tf_isp = 0xdd363c94, tf_ebx = 0xbfbfe644, tf_edx = 0x270c, tf_ecx = 0x0, tf_eax = 0xb, tf_trapno = 0xc, tf_err = 0x2, tf_eip = 0xdd363ccc, tf_c s = 0x8, tf_eflags = 0x10202, tf_esp = 0xdd363ccc, tf_ss = 0x0}) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:446 #16 0xc044f3b8 in calltrap () at {standard input}:98 #17 0xc045fc2e in syscall (frame= {tf_fs = 0x2f, tf_es = 0x2f, tf_ds = 0x2f, tf_edi = 0x827aec0, tf_esi = 0x1869d , tf_ebp = 0xbfbfe65c, tf_isp = 0xdd363d74, tf_ebx = 0x0, tf_edx = 0x847f380, tf_ecx = 0x0, tf_eax = 0x53, tf_trapno = 0x16, tf_err = 0x2, tf_eip = 0x284c4ff3, tf_cs = 0x 1f, tf_eflags = 0x202, tf_esp = 0xbfbfe620, tf_ss = 0x2f}) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:1035 #18 0xc044f40d in Xint0x80_syscall () at {standard input}:140

Debugging Kernel Problems

66

Here we have two panics, one at frame 2, the other at frame 12. If you have more than one panic, the one lower down the stack is the important one; any others are almost certainly a consequence of the rst panic. This is also the panic that is reported in the message at the beginning: Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode Page faults arent always errors, of course. In userland they happen all the time, as weve seen in the output from vmstat. They indicate that the program has tried to access data from an address which doesnt correspond to any page mapped in memory. Its up to the VM system to decide whether the page exists, in which case it gets it, maps it, and restarts the instruction. In the kernel its simpler: the kernel isnt pageable, so any page fault is a fatal error, and the system panics. Looking at the stack trace in more detail, we see that the kernel is executing a system call (frame 17). Looking at the trap summary at the beginning, we nd one of the few useful pieces of information about the environment:
current process = 64462 (emacs)

Looking at the frame, we see:

(kgdb) f 17 #17 0xc045fc2e in syscall (frame= {tf_fs = 0x2f, tf_es = 0x2f, tf_ds = 0x2f, tf_edi = 0x827aec0, tf_esi = 0x1869d , tf_ebp = 0xbfbfe65c, tf_isp = 0xdd363d74, tf_ebx = 0x0, tf_edx = 0x847f380, tf_ecx = 0x0, tf_eax = 0x53, tf_trapno = 0x16, tf_err = 0x2, tf_eip = 0x284c4ff3, tf_cs = 0x 1f, tf_eflags = 0x202, tf_esp = 0xbfbfe620, tf_ss = 0x2f}) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:1035 1035 error = (*callp->sy_call)(td, args);

Which system call is this? syscall is no normal function: its a trap function,
(kgdb) p *callp $1 = { sy_narg = 0x10003, sy_call = 0xc02ef060 <setitimer> }

It would be tempting to think that the error occurred here: thats where the trap frame appears to be pointing. In fact, though, thats not the case. Like syscall, the trap frame isnt a real C stack frame, and it confuses gdb, which thinks its part of the called function, which is hidden in the middle. On this i386 architecture machine, the registers eip and esp of the trap frame (frame 15) tell us where the error really occurred: eip is 0xdd363ccc, and esp is 0xdd363ccc. Thats strange. Theyre both the same. Thats obviously wrong. Looking at the code at this location, we see:
(kgdb) x/10i 0xdd363ccc 0xdd363ccc: add %al,(%eax) 0xdd363cce: add %al,(%eax) 0xdd363cd0: popf 0xdd363cd1: xchg %al,(%ecx) 0xdd363cd3: add %ch,%al 0xdd363cd5: dec %edx 0xdd363cd6: test %al,%ch 0xdd363cd8: lock pop %eax 0xdd363cda: pop %ebx

67
0xdd363cdb: lds 0x40c5844a(%eax),%eax

Debugging Kernel Problems

There are two strange things about this code: rst, it doesnt appear to have a symbolic name associated with it. Normally youd expect to see something like:
kgdb) x/10i 0xc02ef078 0xc02ef078 <setitimer+24>: 0xc02ef079 <setitimer+25>: 0xc02ef07b <setitimer+27>: 0xc02ef07d <setitimer+29>: 0xc02ef083 <setitimer+35>: 0xc02ef088 <setitimer+40>: 0xc02ef08d <setitimer+45>: 0xc02ef090 <setitimer+48>: 0xc02ef093 <setitimer+51>: 0xc02ef095 <setitimer+53>: inc fadds add add mov jmp lea mov test je %ebp (%eax) %al,(%eax) %al,0xd76023e(%ebx) $0x16,%eax 0xc02ef257 <setitimer+503> 0x0(%esi),%esi 0x4(%esi),%ebx %ebx,%ebx 0xc02ef0b9 <setitimer+89>

This code is also a long way from setitimer. In addition, the code doesnt seem to make any sense. In fact, the address is well outside the bounds of kernel code:
(kgdb) kldstat Id Refs Address Size Name 1 15 0xc0100000 53ac68 kernel 2 1 0xc4184000 5000 linprocfs.ko 3 3 0xc43c1000 17000 linux.ko 4 2 0xc422c000 a000 ibcs2.ko 5 1 0xc43d8000 3000 ibcs2_coff.ko 6 1 0xc4193000 2000 rtc.ko 7 1 0xc1ed7000 9000 vmmon_up.ko 8 1 0xc4264000 4000 if_tap.ko 9 1 0xc7a40000 4000 snd_via8233.ko 10 1 0xc7aaa000 18000 snd_pcm.ko

Clearly, any address above 0xd0000000 is not a valid code address. So somehow weve ended up in the woods. How? Things arent made much easier by the fact that we dont have a stack frame for setitimer. It does tell us one thing, though: things must have gone off track in setitimer itself, and not in a function it called. Otherwise we would see the stack frame created by setitimer in the backtrace. We obviously cant nd the stack frame from the register values saved in the trap frame, because theyre incorrect. Instead, we need to go from the stack frame of the calling function, syscall. Unfortunately, gdb is too stupid to be of much help here. Instead we dump the memory area in hexadecimal:
(kgdb) i reg eax ecx edx ebx esp ebp esi edi eip ... 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0xbfbfe644 0xdd363884 0xdd363d40 0xdd363d10 0xc5844a80 0xc045fc2e

0xbfbfe644 0xdd363884 0xdd363d40 0xdd363d10 0xc5844a80 0xc045fc2e

Hmm. This is interesting: even on entry, the esp values are above 0xdd000000. Normally

Debugging Kernel Problems

68

they should be below the kernel text. Still, theres memory there, so its not the immediate problem. The part of the stack were interested in is between the values of the %ebp and %esp registers. Theres quite a bit of data here:
(kgdb) p $ebp - $esp $5 = 0x4bc (kgdb) p/d $ebp - $esp $6 = 1212

in decimal, overriding .gdbinit

In this case, its probably better to look at the code rst. It starts like this:
void syscall(frame) struct trapframe frame; { caddr_t params; struct sysent *callp; struct thread *td = curthread; struct proc *p = td->td_proc; register_t orig_tf_eflags; u_int sticks; int error; int narg; int args[8]; u_int code;

We can normally look at the stack frame with info local, but in this case it doesnt work:
(kgdb) i loc params = 0xbfbfe624---Cant read userspace from dump, or kernel process---

There are other ways. Normally the compiler allocates automatic variables in the order in which they appear in the source, but there are exceptions: it can allocate them to registers, in which case they dont appear on the stack at all, or it can optimize the layout to reduce stack usage. In this case, we have to check them all:
(kgdb) p &params $7 = (char **) 0xdd363d08 (kgdb) p &callp $8 = (struct sysent **) 0xdd363d04 (kgdb) p &td Cant take address of "td" which isnt an lvalue. (kgdb) p &p Cant take address of "p" which isnt an lvalue. (kgdb) p &orig_tf_eflag $9 = (register_t *) 0xdd363d00 (kgdb) p &sticks $10 = (u_int *) 0xdd363cfc (kgdb) p &error Cant take address of "error" which isnt an lvalue. (kgdb) p &narg $11 = (int *) 0xdd363cf8 (kgdb) p &args $12 = (int (*)[8]) 0xdd363d10 (kgdb) p &code $13 = (u_int *) 0xdd363d0c

The error message Cant take address indicates that the compiler has allocated a register for this value. Interestingly, the last automatic variables are args and code, but they have been assigned the highest addresses. The lowest stack address is of narg, 0xdd363cf8.

69

Debugging Kernel Problems

Thats where we need to look. Below that on the stack we may nd temporary storage, but below that we should nd the two parameters for the syscall function, followed (in descending order) by the return address (0xc045fc2e). The return address is particularly useful because we can use it to locate the stack frame in the rst place. It would be nice to be able to dump memory backwards, but thats not possible. How far down the stack should we go? One way is to look at the stack frame of the next function. We have that in frame 15: the esp is 0xdd363ccc. Thats not so far down, so lets see what we nd:
(kgdb) x/20x 0xdd363cc0 0xdd363cc0: 0xc5844ae8 0xdd363cd0: 0x0001869d 0xdd363ce0: 0xdd363d40 0xdd363cf0: 0xc04de816 0x00000000 0xc5844ae8 0xc045fc2e 0x00000409 0x00000000 0xc55b58f0 0xc55b58f0 0x00000003 0x00000000 0xc5844a80 0xdd363d10 0x00009a8d

When dumping data in this format, its a good idea to start with an address with the last (hex) digit 0; otherwise its easy to get confused about the address of each word. We nd our return address at 0xdd363ce4. That means that the words at 0xdd363ce8 and 0xdd363cec are the parameters, so there are apparently two words of temporary storage on the stack. Its worth looking at the parameters. Again, the call is:
1035 error = (*callp->sy_call)(td, args);

So wed expect to see the value of td in location 0xdd363ce8, and the value of args in location 0xdd363cec. Well, &args is really in 0xdd363cec, but the value of td is
(kgdb) p td $1 = (struct thread *) 0xdd363d10

Look familiar? Thats the value of args. This is supposed to be a kernel thread descriptor, so the address on the local stack has to be wrong. There are a number of ways this could have happened:

The variable may no longer be needed, so it could have been optimized away. This is unlikely here, since weve only just used it to call a function. We dont seem to have returned from the function, so there was no time for the calling function to reuse the storage space.

Maybe the value was correct, but the called function could have changed the value of the
copy of the value passed as an argument. This is possible, but its pretty rare that a function changes the value of the arguments passed to it.

Maybe a random pointer bug resulted in the value of td being overwritten by the called
function or one of the functions that called it. Which is it? Lets look at what might have happened in setitimer. Where is it? gdb lists it for you, but it doesnt tell you where it is:
(kgdb) l setitimer 455 /* ARGSUSED */ 456 int 457 setitimer(struct thread *td, struct setitimer_args *uap)

Debugging Kernel Problems

458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 { struct struct struct struct int s, proc *p = td->td_proc; itimerval aitv; timeval ctv; itimerval *itvp; error = 0;

70

if (uap->which > ITIMER_PROF) return (EINVAL); itvp = uap->itv; if (itvp && (error = copyin(itvp, &aitv, sizeof(struct itimerval)))) return (error); mtx_lock(&Giant); if ((uap->itv = uap->oitv) && (error = getitimer(td, (struct getitimer_args *)uap))) { goto done2; } if (itvp == 0) { error = 0; goto done2; } if (itimerfix(&aitv.it_value)) { error = EINVAL;

It doesnt tell you where it is, though; you can fake that by setting a breakpoint on the function. Never mind that you cant use the breakpoint; at least it tells you where it is:
(kgdb) b setitimer Breakpoint 1 at 0xc02ef072: file /usr/src/sys/kern/kern_time.c, line 459.

The most interesting things to look at here are the automatic variables: we can try to nd them on the stack. Unfortunately, since gdb doesnt recognize the stack frame for the function, we cant get much help from it. Doing it manually can be cumbersome: we have two ints (easy), two struct pointers (not much more difcult) and two structs, for which we need to nd the sizes. Using etags, we nd:
struct itimerval { struct timeval it_interval; struct timeval it_value; }; (another le) struct timeval { int i; }; /* timer interval */ /* current value */

So our struct timeval is 4 bytes long, and struct itimerval is 8 bytes long. That makes a total of 28 bytes on the stack. Looking at the assembler code, however, we see:
(kgdb) x/10i setitimer 0xc02ef060 <setitimer>: push 0xc02ef061 <setitimer+1>: 0xc02ef063 <setitimer+3>: %ebp mov sub

%esp,%ebp $0x38,%esp

Thats our standard prologue, alright, but its reserving 0x38 or 56 bytes of local storage, twice what we need for the automatic variables. Probably the compilers using them for other purposes, but it could also mean that the variables arent where we think they are. In fact, as the code continues, we see this to be true:
0xc02ef066 <setitimer+6>: 0xc02ef069 <setitimer+9>: mov mov %ebx,0xfffffff4(%ebp) %esi,0xfffffff8(%ebp)

71
0xc02ef06c <setitimer+12>: mov %edi,0xfffffffc(%ebp)

Debugging Kernel Problems

In other words, its saving the registers ebx, esi and edi on the stack immediately below the stack frame. That accounts for 12 further words. It also gives us a chance to check whether we know what the contents were. This will give us some conrmation that were on the right track. We call setitimer from this line:
1035 error = (*callp->sy_call)(td, args); (kgdb) i li 1035 get info about the instruction addresses Line 1035 of "/src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c" starts at address 0xc045fc1e <syscall+638> and ends at 0xc045fc30 <syscall+656>. (kgdb) x/10i 0xc045fc1e look at the code 0xc045fc1e <syscall+638>: mov %esi,(%esp,1) 0xc045fc21 <syscall+641>: lea 0xffffffd0(%ebp),%eax 0xc045fc24 <syscall+644>: mov %eax,0x4(%esp,1) 0xc045fc28 <syscall+648>: mov 0xffffffc4(%ebp),%edx 0xc045fc2b <syscall+651>: call *0x4(%edx)

This code is confusing because some instructions us ebp relative addressing, and others use esp relative addressing. We know what the contents of the ebp and esp registers were when these instructions were executed: ebp is saved on the stack at location 0xdd363ce0: its 0xdd363d40. At the start of the instruction sequence, esp is pointing to the location above the return address, 0xdd363ce8:
0xdd363cc0: 0xdd363cd0: 0xdd363ce0: 0xdd363cf0: 0xdd363d00: 0xdd363d10: 0xdd363d20: 0xdd363d30: 0xdd363d40: ebp 0xdd363d50: 0xc5844ae8 0x0001869d 0xdd363d40 0xc04de816 0x00000202 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x0fffffff 0xbfbfe65c 0x0000002f 0x00000000 0xc5844ae8 0xc045fc2e esp 0x00000409 0xc05134f8 0x00000000 0xc55ba9a0 0x00000000 0xc044f40d 0x0827aec0 0x00000000 0xc55b58f0 0xc55b58f0 0x00000003 0xbfbfe624 0x00000000 0xc1619500 0x0001869d 0x0000002f 0x0001869d 0x00000000 0xc5844a80 0xdd363d10 0x00009a8d 0x00000053 0x00009a8d 0x00000001 0x0827aec0 0x0000002f 0xbfbfe65c

Looking at these instructions one by one, we see:

0xc045fc1e <syscall+638>: mov %esi,(%esp,1)

This moves the value in the esi register to location 0xdd363ce8. This is the rst parameter, td.
0xc045fc21 <syscall+641>: lea 0xffffffd0(%ebp),%eax

This loads the effective address (lea) of offset -0x30 from the ebp register contents, address 0xdd363d10, into register eax. This data is in the calling functions local stack frame. Currently its 0, though it may not have been at the time.
0xc045fc24 <syscall+644>: mov %eax,0x4(%esp,1)

This stores register eax at 4 from the esp register contents, address 0xdd363cec. This is the second parameter to the function call, args. We can conrm that by looking at the local variables we printed out before:

Debugging Kernel Problems

(kgdb) p &args $12 = (int (*)[8]) 0xdd363d10

72

As a result, wed expect the contents of location 0xdd363cec to contain 0xdd363d10, which it does.
0xc045fc28 <syscall+648>: 0xc045fc2b <syscall+651>: mov call 0xffffffc4(%ebp),%edx *0x4(%edx)

This loads the contents of the storage location at offset -0x3c from the contents of the ebp into the edx register. Register ebp contains 0xdd363d40, so we load edx from location 0xdd363d04. Again, we conrm with the locations we printed out before:
(kgdb) p &callp $8 = (struct sysent **) 0xdd363d04

Finally, this instruction:

1035 error = (*callp->sy_call)(td, args);

calls the function whose address is at offset 4 from where edx. Its pretty clear that this worked, since we ended up in the correct function.

Where we are now

Weve now found our way to the function call. We know that we the call was effectively:
setitimer (0xc55b58f0, 0xdd363d10)

We still havent found out what happened, so the next thing to look at is the called function, setitimer.

Entering setitimer
On entering setitimer, we see:
int setitimer(struct thread *td, struct setitimer_args *uap) { struct proc *p = td->td_proc; struct itimerval aitv; struct timeval ctv; struct itimerval *itvp; int s, error = 0; if (uap->which > ITIMER_PROF) return (EINVAL); itvp = uap->itv; if (itvp && (error = copyin(itvp, &aitv, sizeof(struct itimerval)))) return (error); mtx_lock(&Giant); if ((uap->itv = uap->oitv) && (error = getitimer(td, (struct getitimer_args *)uap))) {

73

Debugging Kernel Problems

goto done2; } if (itvp == 0) { error = 0; goto done2; } if (itimerfix(&aitv.it_value)) { error = EINVAL; goto done2; } if (!timevalisset(&aitv.it_value)) { timevalclear(&aitv.it_interval); } else if (itimerfix(&aitv.it_interval)) { error = EINVAL; goto done2; } s = splclock(); /* XXX: still needed ? */ if (uap->which == ITIMER_REAL) { if (timevalisset(&p->p_realtimer.it_value)) callout_stop(&p->p_itcallout); if (timevalisset(&aitv.it_value)) callout_reset(&p->p_itcallout, tvtohz(&aitv.it_value), realitexpire, p); getmicrouptime(&ctv); timevaladd(&aitv.it_value, &ctv); p->p_realtimer = aitv; } else { p->p_stats->p_timer[uap->which] = aitv; } splx(s);

done2: mtx_unlock(&Giant); return (error); }

The rst code to be executed is the function prologue:

(kgdb) x/200i setitimer prologue 0xc02ef060 <setitimer>: push 0xc02ef061 <setitimer+1>: 0xc02ef063 <setitimer+3>: 0xc02ef066 <setitimer+6>: 0xc02ef069 <setitimer+9>: 0xc02ef06c <setitimer+12>:

%ebp mov sub mov mov mov

%esp,%ebp $0x38,%esp %ebx,0xfffffff4(%ebp) %esi,0xfffffff8(%ebp) %edi,0xfffffffc(%ebp)

save ebp and create a new stack frame make space on stack save ebx save esi save edi

After executing the prologue, then, wed expect to see the esp value to be 0x38 lower than the ebp value. It doesnt have to stay that way, but it shouldnt be any higher. The trap message shows the values:
stack pointer frame pointer = 0x10:0xdd363ca8 = 0x10:0xdd363ce0

That looks ne: the difference is the expected value of 0x38. But looking at the trap frame in the backtrace, we see:
#15 0xc045f10d in trap (frame= {tf_fs = 0x18, tf_es = 0x10, tf_ds = 0x10, tf_edi = 0xc5844a80, tf_esi = 0xdd363d10, tf_ebp = 0xdd363ce0, tf_isp = 0xdd363c94, tf_ebx = 0xbfbfe644, tf_edx = 0x270c, tf_ecx = 0x0, tf_eax = 0xb, tf_trapno = 0xc, tf_err = 0x2, tf_eip = 0xdd363ccc, tf_cs = 0x8, tf_eflags = 0x10202, tf_esp = 0xdd363ccc, tf_ss = 0x0}) at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:446

Debugging Kernel Problems

74

Whats wrong there? If you look at the function trap_fatal, conveniently in the same le as syscall, /sys/i386/i386/trap.c, we see that its trap_fatal which prints out the values:
static void trap_fatal(frame, eva) struct trapframe *frame; vm_offset_t eva; { int code, type, ss, esp; struct soft_segment_descriptor softseg; ... printf("instruction pointer = 0x%x:0x%x\n", frame->tf_cs & 0xffff, frame->tf_eip); if ((ISPL(frame->tf_cs) == SEL_UPL) || (frame->tf_eflags & PSL_VM)) { ss = frame->tf_ss & 0xffff; esp = frame->tf_esp; } else { ss = GSEL(GDATA_SEL, SEL_KPL); esp = (int)&frame->tf_esp; } printf("stack pointer = 0x%x:0x%x\n", ss, esp); printf("frame pointer = 0x%x:0x%x\n", ss, frame->tf_ebp);

The parameter frame is the same frame that weve been looking at:

(kgdb) f 15 #15 0xc045f10d in trap (frame= {tf_fs = 0x18, tf_es = 0x10, tf_ds = 0x10, tf_edi = 0xc5844a80, tf_esi = 0xdd363d10, tf_ebp = at /src/FreeBSD/5-CURRENT-WANTADILLA/src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c:446 446 (void) trap_pfault(&frame, FALSE, eva); Current language: auto; currently c (kgdb) p &frame $10 = (struct trapframe *) 0xdd363c68

Looking at the code, its not surprising that the values of eip and ebp agree with whats in the trap frame. But what about esp? trap_fatal calculates that itself. Why does it do so, and why does it come to a different value? The test is:
if ((ISPL(frame->tf_cs) == SEL_UPL) || (frame->tf_eflags & PSL_VM)) {

The rst test checks whether the saved code segment (cs) is a user code segment (the lowest two bits are 3). We have:
(kgdb) p frame->tf_cs $12 = 0x8

So its not that. The second one checks whether were running in virtual 8086 mode, as signaled by the PSL_VM bit in the saved eflags value (see sys/i386/include/psl.h). Thats not the case either:
(kgdb) p frame->tf_eflags $13 = 0x10202

This is probably the normal case: instead of saved contents of esp value, it uses the address of the saved contents.

75

Debugging Kernel Problems

Summary
Working through a dump like this is an open-ended matter. Its never certain whether continuing will nd something or not. This example shows a relatively painful trace through a processor dump. Will we nd any more? Its uncertain. The dump came from a system with known hardware problems, so its quite possible that all that can be found is just what kind of problem occurred.

Debugging Kernel Problems

76

8
gdb macros
The gdb debugger includes a macro language. Its syntax is reminiscent of C, but different enough to be confusing. Unfortunately, theres no good reference to it. You can read the texinfo les which come with gdb, but it doesnt help much. In this section well look at some practical examples. As weve seen, gdb understands nothing of kernel data structures. Many other kernel debuggers, including ddb, can simulate userland commands such as ps and the FreeBSD command kldstat, which shows the currently loaded kernel loadable modules (kld s, called LKM s in NetBSD and OpenBSD). To get gdb to do the same thing, you need to write a macro which understands the kernel internal data structures.

kldstat
Well look at the kldstat macro rst, because its simpler. FreeBSD keeps track of klds with the variable linker_files, described in sys/kern/kern_linker.c
static linker_file_list_t linker_files;

In sys/sys/linker.h, we read:
typedef struct linker_file* linker_file_t; ... struct linker_file { KOBJ_FIELDS; int refs; /* int userrefs; /* int flags; #define LINKER_FILE_LINKED 0x1 /* TAILQ_ENTRY(linker_file) link; /* char* filename; /* int id; /* caddr_t address; /* size_t size; /* int ndeps; /*

reference count */ kldload(2) count */ file has been fully linked */ list of all loaded files */ file which was loaded */ unique id */ load address */ size of file */ number of dependencies */

77

Debugging Kernel Problems

linker_file_t* deps; /* list of dependencies */ STAILQ_HEAD(, common_symbol) common; /* list of common symbols */ TAILQ_HEAD(, module) modules; /* modules in this file */ TAILQ_ENTRY(linker_file) loaded; /* preload dependency support */

};

This is a linked list, and we access the linkage by the standard macros. gdb doesnt understand these macros, of course, so we have to do things manually. The best way is to start with the preprocessor output of the compilation of sys/kern/kern_linker.o
# cd /usr/src/sys/i386/compile/GENERIC # make kern_linker.o cc -c -O -pipe -mcpu=pentiumpro -Wall -Wredundant-decls -Wnested-externs -Wstrict-prot otypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Winline -Wcast-qual -fformat-extensions -std=c99 -g -nostdinc -I- -I. -I../../.. -I../../../dev -I../../../contrib/dev/acpic a -I../../../contrib/ipfilter -I../../../contrib/dev/ath -I../../../contrib/dev/ath/fr eebsd -D_KERNEL -include opt_global.h -fno-common -finline-limit=15000 -fno-strict-ali asing -mno-align-long-strings -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -ffreestanding -Werror .. /../../kern/kern_linker.c copy and paste into the window, then add the text in italic # cc -c -O -pipe -mcpu=pentiumpro -Wall -Wredundant-decls -Wnested-externs -Wstrict-pr ototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Winline -Wcast-qual -fformat-extensions -std=c99 -g -nostdinc -I- -I. -I../../.. -I../../../dev -I../../../contrib/dev/acpica -I../../../contrib/ipfilter -I../../../contrib/dev/ath -I../../../contrib/dev/ath/fre ebsd -D_KERNEL -include opt_global.h -fno-common -finline-limit=15000 -fno-strict-alia sing -mno-align-long-strings -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -ffreestanding -Werror ../.. /../kern/kern_linker.c -C -Dd -E | less

Then search through the output for linker_file (truncating lines where necessary to t on the page):
struct linker_file { kobj_ops_t ops; int refs; /* reference count */ int userrefs; /* kldload(2) count */ int flags; #define LINKER_FILE_LINKED 0x1 struct { struct linker_file *tqe_next; struct linker_file **tqe_prev; } link; char* filename; /* file which was loaded */ int id; /* unique id */ caddr_t address; /* load address */ size_t size; /* size of file */ int ndeps; /* number of dependencies */ linker_file_t* deps; /* list of dependencies */ struct { struct common_symbol *stqh_first; struct common_symbol **stqh_last; } struct { struct module *tqh_first; struct module **tqh_last; } modules; struct { struct linker_file *tqe_next; struct linker_file **tqe_prev; } loaded; };

With this information, we can walk through the list manually. In gdb macro form, it looks like this:
# kldstat(8) lookalike define kldstat y set $file = linker_files.tqh_first printf "Id Refs Address Size while ($file != 0) printf "%2d %4d 0x%8x %8x %s\n", $file->id, $file->refs, $file->address, $file->size, $file->filename

Name\n" \ \ \ \ \

see text note $ for local variables no parentheses for functions effectively C syntax

Debugging Kernel Problems

set $file = $file->link.tqe_next note set keyword for assignments end end document kldstat Equivalent of the kldstat(8) command, without options. end

78

Document the macro after its denition. If you try to do it before, gdb complains that the function doesnt exist. Note the line y by itself on the second line. This is a macro call. y is dened as:
define y echo Check your .gdbinit, it contains a y command\n end

That doesnt seem to make much sense. In fact, this is a workaround for a limitation of gdb sooner or later youll need to modify a macro (presumably in an editor) and copy and paste it back to the gdb session. Theres no way to tell an interactive gdb just do it: it responds with something like:
(gdb) define kldstat Redefine command "kldstat"? (y or n) set $file = linker_files.tqh_first printf "Id Refs Address Size Name\n" while ($file != 0) printf "%2d %4d 0x%8x %8x %s\n", \ $file->id, \ $file->refs, \ $file->address, \ $file->size, \ $file->filename set $file = $file->link.tqe_next end end Please answer y or n. Redefine command "kldstat"? (y or n) Please answer y or n. Redefine command "kldstat"? (y or n) Please answer y or n. (etc)

In other words, it completely ignores all input until you enter y or n. You can solve this problem by putting a y in the second line, but then it wouldnt work the rst time you tried to execute it. Thats the purpose of the y macro.

Another example: ps
One of the most important things you want to know is what is going on in the processor. Traditional BSD commands such as ps have options to work on a core dump for exactly this reason, but they have been neglected in modern BSDs. Instead, heres a gdb macro which does nearly the same thing.
define ps set $nproc = nprocs set $aproc = allproc.lh_first set $proc = allproc.lh_first printf " pid proc addr while (--$nproc >= 0) set $pptr = $proc.p_pptr if ($pptr == 0)

uid

ppid

pgrp

flag stat comm

wchan\n"

79

Debugging Kernel Problems

set $pptr = $proc end if ($proc.p_stat) printf "%5d %08x %08x %4d %5d %5d %06x %d %-10s ", \ $proc.p_pid, $aproc, \ $proc.p_addr, $proc.p_cred->p_ruid, $pptr->p_pid, \ $proc.p_pgrp->pg_id, $proc.p_flag, $proc.p_stat, \ &$proc.p_comm[0] if ($proc.p_wchan) if ($proc.p_wmesg) printf "%s ", $proc.p_wmesg end printf "%x", $proc.p_wchan end printf "\n" end set $aproc = $proc.p_list.le_next set $proc = $aproc end

end

This macro runs relatively slowly over a serial line, since it needs to transfer a lot of data. The output looks like this:
(kgdb) ps pid proc 2638 c9a53ac0 2626 c9980f20 2625 c9a53440 2624 c9a53780 2616 c9a535e0 2615 c997e1a0 2614 c9a53e00 2612 c997f860 2437 c9a53c60 2432 c997e340 2415 c997eb60 2414 c997f1e0 2413 c997e9c0 2404 c997e4e0 addr uid ppid pgrp c99f7000 0 2624 2402 c99b0000 0 2614 2402 c9a94000 0 2614 2402 c9a7d000 0 2614 2402 c9a72000 0 2615 2402 c9a4d000 0 2612 2402 c9a41000 0 2612 2402 c99e8000 0 2413 2402 c9a54000 0 2432 2432 c9a1d000 0 2400 2432 c9a21000 0 2414 2402 c99f2000 0 2404 2402 c9a30000 0 2404 2402 c9a38000 0 2402 2402 flag stat comm 004004 2 find 004084 3 sort 004084 3 xargs 000084 3 sh 004184 3 postdrop 004084 3 sendmail 004084 3 sh 004084 3 sh 004184 3 postdrop 004084 3 sendmail 004084 3 cat 000084 3 sh 000084 3 sh 004084 3 sh wchan piperd c95d2cc0 piperd c95d3080 wait c9a53780 piperd c95d2e00 piperd c95d3b20 wait c9a53e00 wait c997f860 piperd c95d34e0 piperd c95d31c0 piperd c95d3760 wait c997f1e0 wait c997e9c0 wait c997e4e0

Both FreeBSD and NetBSD include some macros in the source tree. In FreeBSD youll nd them in /usr/src/tools/debugscripts/, and in NetBSD theyre in /usr/src/sys/gdbscripts/.

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

NAME ddb interactive kernel debugger SYNOPSIS options DDB To prevent activation of the debugger on kernel panic(9): options DDB_UNATTENDED DESCRIPTION The ddb kernel debugger has most of the features of the old kdb, but with a more rational syntax inspired by gdb(1). If linked into the running kernel, it can be invoked locally with the debug keymap(5) action. The debugger is also invoked on kernel panic(9) if the debug.debugger_on_panic sysctl(8) MIB variable is set non-zero, which is the default unless the DDB_UNATTENDED option is specied. The current location is called dot. The dot is displayed with a hexadecimal format at a prompt. Examine and write commands update dot to the address of the last line examined or the last location modied, and set next to the address of the next location to be examined or changed. Other commands dont change dot, and set next to be the same as dot. The general command syntax is: command[/modifier] address[,count] A blank line repeats the previous command from the address next with count 1 and no modiers. Specifying address sets dot to the address. Omitting address uses dot. A missing count is taken to be 1 for printing commands or innity for stack traces. The ddb debugger has a feature like the more(1) command for the output. If an output line exceeds the number set in the $lines variable, it displays --db_more-- and waits for a response. The valid responses for it are: SPC one more page RET one more line q abort the current command, and return to the command input mode Finally, ddb provides a small (currently 10 items) command history, and offers simple emacs-style command line editing capabilities. In addition to the emacs control keys, the usual ANSI arrow keys might be used to browse through the history buffer, and move the cursor within the current line. COMMANDS examine x Display the addressed locations according to the formats in the modier. Multiple modier formats display multiple locations. If no format is specied, the last formats specied for this command is used. The format characters are: b look at by bytes (8 bits) h look at by half words (16 bits) l look at by long words (32 bits) a print the location being displayed A print the location with a line number if possible x display in unsigned hex z display in signed hex o display in unsigned octal

FreeBSD 5.2

January 16, 1996

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

d u r c s m i I

display in signed decimal display in unsigned decimal display in current radix, signed display low 8 bits as a character. Non-printing characters are displayed as an octal escape code (e.g., \000). display the null-terminated string at the location. Non-printing characters are displayed as octal escapes. display in unsigned hex with character dump at the end of each line. The location is also displayed in hex at the beginning of each line. display as an instruction display as an instruction with possible alternate formats depending on the machine: VAX dont assume that each external label is a procedure entry mask i386 dont round to the next long word boundary MIPS print register contents

xf Examine forward: Execute an examine command with the last specied parameters to it except that the next address displayed by it is used as the start address. xb Examine backward: Execute an examine command with the last specied parameters to it except that the last start address subtracted by the size displayed by it is used as the start address. print[/acdoruxz] Print addrs according to the modier character (as described above for examine). Valid formats are: a, x, z, o, d, u, r, and c. If no modier is specied, the last one specied to it is used. addr can be a string, in which case it is printed as it is. For example: print/x "eax = " $eax "\necx = " $ecx "\n" will print like: eax = xxxxxx ecx = yyyyyy write[/bhl] addr expr1 [expr2 ...] Write the expressions specied after addr on the command line at succeeding locations starting with addr The write unit size can be specied in the modier with a letter b (byte), h (half word) or l (long word) respectively. If omitted, long word is assumed. Warning: since there is no delimiter between expressions, strange things may happen. Its best to enclose each expression in parentheses. set $variable [=] expr Set the named variable or register with the value of expr. Valid variable names are described below. break[/u] Set a break point at addr. If count is supplied, continues count - 1 times before stopping at the break point. If the break point is set, a break point number is printed with #. This number can be used in deleting the break point or adding conditions to it. If the u modier is specied, this command sets a break point in user space address. Without the u option, the address is considered in the kernel space, and wrong space address is rejected with an error message. This modier can be used only if it is supported by machine dependent routines. Warning: If a user text is shadowed by a normal user space debugger, user space break points may not work correctly. Setting a break point at the low-level code paths may also cause strange behavior.

FreeBSD 5.2

January 16, 1996

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

delete addr delete #number Delete the break point. The target break point can be specied by a break point number with #, or by using the same addr specied in the original break command. step[/p] Single step count times (the comma is a mandatory part of the syntax). If the p modier is specied, print each instruction at each step. Otherwise, only print the last instruction. Warning: depending on machine type, it may not be possible to single-step through some low-level code paths or user space code. On machines with software-emulated single-stepping (e.g., pmax), stepping through code executed by interrupt handlers will probably do the wrong thing. continue[/c] Continue execution until a breakpoint or watchpoint. If the c modier is specied, count instructions while executing. Some machines (e.g., pmax) also count loads and stores. Warning: when counting, the debugger is really silently single-stepping. This means that single-stepping on low-level code may cause strange behavior. until[/p] Stop at the next call or return instruction. If the p modier is specied, print the call nesting depth and the cumulative instruction count at each call or return. Otherwise, only print when the matching return is hit. next[/p] match[/p] Stop at the matching return instruction. If the p modier is specied, print the call nesting depth and the cumulative instruction count at each call or return. Otherwise, only print when the matching return is hit. trace[/u] [frame] [,count] Stack trace. The u option traces user space; if omitted, trace only traces kernel space. count is the number of frames to be traced. If count is omitted, all frames are printed. Warning: User space stack trace is valid only if the machine dependent code supports it. search[/bhl] addr value [mask] [,count] Search memory for value. This command might fail in interesting ways if it doesnt nd the searched-for value. This is because ddb doesnt always recover from touching bad memory. The optional count argument limits the search. show all procs[/m] ps[/m] Display all process information. The process information may not be shown if it is not supported in the machine, or the bottom of the stack of the target process is not in the main memory at that time. The m modier will alter the display to show VM map addresses for the process and not show other info. show registers[/u] Display the register set. If the u option is specied, it displays user registers instead of kernel or currently saved one. Warning: The support of the u modier depends on the machine. If not supported, incorrect information will be displayed. show map[/f] addr Prints the VM map at addr. If the f modier is specied the complete map is printed.

FreeBSD 5.2

January 16, 1996

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

show object[/f] addr Prints the VM object at addr. If the f option is specied the complete object is printed. show watches Displays all watchpoints. reset Hard reset the system. watch addr,size Set a watchpoint for a region. Execution stops when an attempt to modify the region occurs. The size argument defaults to 4. If you specify a wrong space address, the request is rejected with an error message. Warning: Attempts to watch wired kernel memory may cause unrecoverable error in some systems such as i386. Watchpoints on user addresses work best. hwatch addr,size Set a hardware watchpoint for a region if supported by the architecture. Execution stops when an attempt to modify the region occurs. The size argument defaults to 4. Warning: The hardware debug facilities do not have a concept of separate address spaces like the watch command does. Use hwatch for setting watchpoints on kernel address locations only, and avoid its use on user mode address spaces. dhwatch addr,size Delete specied hardware watchpoint. gdb Toggles between remote GDB and DDB mode. In remote GDB mode, another machine is required that runs gdb(1) using the remote debug feature, with a connection to the serial console port on the target machine. Currently only available on the i386 and Alpha architectures. help Print a short summary of the available commands and command abbreviations. VARIABLES The debugger accesses registers and variables as $name. Register names are as in the show registers command. Some variables are sufxed with numbers, and may have some modier following a colon immediately after the variable name. For example, register variables can have a u modier to indicate user register (e.g., $eax:u). Built-in variables currently supported are: radix Input and output radix maxoff Addresses are printed as symbol+offset unless offset is greater than maxoff. maxwidth The width of the displayed line. lines The number of lines. It is used by "more" feature. tabstops Tab stop width. workxx Work variable. xx can be 0 to 31. EXPRESSIONS Almost all expression operators in C are supported except , , and unary &. Special rules in ddb are: Identiers The name of a symbol is translated to the value of the symbol, which is the address of the corresponding object. . and : can be used in the identier. If supported by an object format dependent routine, [lename:]func:lineno, [lename:]variable, and [lename:]lineno can be accepted as a symbol.

FreeBSD 5.2

January 16, 1996

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

Numbers . + .. $variable a#b expr

Radix is determined by the rst two letters: 0x: hex, 0o: octal, 0t: decimal; otherwise, follow current radix. dot next address of the start of the last line examined. Unlike dot or next, this is only changed by examine or write command. last address explicitly specied. Translated to the value of the specied variable. It may be followed by a : and modiers as described above. a binary operator which rounds up the left hand side to the next multiple of right hand side. indirection. It may be followed by a : and modiers as described above.

HINTS On machines with an ISA expansion bus, a simple NMI generation card can be constructed by connecting a push button between the A01 and B01 (CHCHK# and GND) card ngers. Momentarily shorting these two ngers together may cause the bridge chipset to generate an NMI, which causes the kernel to pass control to ddb. Some bridge chipsets do not generate a NMI on CHCHK#, so your mileage may vary. The NMI allows one to break into the debugger on a wedged machine to diagnose problems. Other bus bridge chipsets may be able to generate NMI using bus specic methods. SEE ALSO gdb(1) HISTORY The ddb debugger was developed for Mach, and ported to 386 BSD 0.1. This manual page translated from man macros by Garrett Wollman.

FreeBSD 5.2

January 16, 1996

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

NAME ddb in-kernel debugger SYNOPSIS options DDB To enable history editing: options DDB_HISTORY_SIZE=integer To disable entering ddb upon kernel panic: options DDB_ONPANIC=0 DESCRIPTION ddb is the in-kernel debugger. It may be entered at any time via a special key sequence, and optionally may be invoked when the kernel panics. ENTERING THE DEBUGGER Unless DDB_ONPANIC is set to 0, ddb will be activated whenever the kernel would otherwise panic. ddb may also be activated from the console. In general, sending a break on a serial console will activate ddb. There are also key sequences for each port that will activate ddb from the keyboard: alpha <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Esc> on PC style keyboards. amiga <LAlt>-<LAmiga>-<F10> atari <Alt>-<LeftShift>-<F9> hp300 <Shift>-<Reset> hpcmips <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Esc> hpcsh <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Esc> i386 <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Esc> <Break> on serial console. mac68k <Command>-<Power>, or the Interrupt switch. macppc Some models: <Command>-<Option>-<Power> mvme68k Abort switch on CPU card. pmax <Do> on LK-201 rcons console. <Break> on serial console. sparc <L1>-A, or <Stop>-A on a Sun keyboard. <Break> on serial console. sun3 <L1>-A, or <Stop>-A on a Sun keyboard. <Break> on serial console. sun3x <L1>-A, or <Stop>-A on a Sun keyboard. <Break> on serial console. x68k Interrupt switch on the body. In addition, ddb may be explicitly activated by the debugging code in the kernel if DDB is congured. COMMAND SYNTAX The general command syntax is: command[/modifier] address [,count] The current memory location being edited is referred to as dot, and the next location is next. They are displayed as hexadecimal numbers. Commands that examine and/or modify memory update dot to the address of the last line examined or the last location modied, and set next to the next location to be examined or modied. Other commands dont change dot, and set next to be the same as dot.

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

A blank line repeats the previous command from the address next with the previous count and no modiers. Specifying address sets dot to the address. If address is omitted, dot is used. A missing count is taken to be 1 for printing commands, and innity for stack traces. The syntax: ,count repeats the previous command, just as a blank line does, but with the specied count. ddb has a more(1)-like functionality; if a number of lines in a commands output exceeds the number dened in the lines variable, then ddb displays --db more-- and waits for a response, which may be one of: <return> <space> q one more line. one more page. abort the current command, and return to the command input mode.

If ddb history editing is enabled (by dening the options DDB_HISTORY_SIZE=num kernel option), then a history of the last num commands is kept. The history can be manipulated with the following key sequences: <Ctrl>-P <Ctrl>-N retrieve previous command in history (if any). retrieve next command in history (if any).

COMMANDS ddb supports the following commands: !address[(expression[,...])] A synonym for call. break[/u] address[,count] Set a breakpoint at address. If count is supplied, continues ( count-1 ) times before stopping at the breakpoint. If the breakpoint is set, a breakpoint number is printed with #. This number can be used to delete the breakpoint, or to add conditions to it. If /u is specied, set a breakpoint at a user-space address. Without /u, address is considered to be in the kernel-space, and an address in the wrong space will be rejected, and an error message will be emitted. This modier may only be used if it is supported by machine dependent routines. Warning: if a user text is shadowed by a normal user-space debugger, user-space breakpoints may not work correctly. Setting a breakpoint at the low-level code paths may also cause strange behavior. bt[/u] [frame-address][,count] A synonym for trace. bt/t [pid][,count] A synonym for trace. call address[(expression[,...])] Call the function specied by address with the argument(s) listed in parentheses. Parentheses may be omitted if the function takes no arguments. The number of arguments is currently limited to 10. continue[/c] Continue execution until a breakpoint or watchpoint. If /c is specied, count instructions while executing. Some machines (e.g., pmax) also count loads and stores.

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

Warning: when counting, the debugger is really silently single-stepping. This means that single-stepping on low-level may cause strange behavior. delete address | #number Delete a breakpoint. The target breakpoint may be specied by address, as per break, or by the breakpoint number returned by break if its prexed with #. dmesg [count] Prints the contents of the kernel message buffer. The optional count argument will limit printing to at most the last count bytes of the message buffer. dwatch address Delete the watchpoint at address that was previously set with watch command. examine[/modifier] address[,count] Display the address locations according to the format in modifier. Multiple modier formats display multiple locations. If modifier isnt specied, the modier from the last use of examine is used. The valid format characters for modifier are: b examine bytes (8 bits). h examine half-words (16 bits). l examine words (legacy long, 32 bits). L examine long words (implementation dependent) a print the location being examined. A print the location with a line number if possible. x display in unsigned hex. z display in signed hex. o display in unsigned octal. d display in signed decimal. u display in unsigned decimal. r display in current radix, signed. c display low 8 bits as a character. Non-printing characters as displayed as an octal escape code (e.g., \000). s display the NUL terminated string at the location. Non-printing characters are displayed as octal escapes. m display in unsigned hex with a character dump at the end of each line. The location is displayed as hex at the beginning of each line. i display as a machine instruction. I display as a machine instruction, with possible alternative formats depending upon the machine: alpha print register operands m68k use Motorola syntax pc532 print instruction bytes in hex vax dont assume that each external label is a procedure entry mask kill pid[,signal_number] Send a signal to the process specied by the pid. Note that pid is interpreted using the current radix (see trace/t command for details). If signal_number isnt specied, the SIGTERM signal is sent. match[/p] A synonym for next.

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

next[/p] Stop at the matching return instruction. If /p is specied, print the call nesting depth and the cumulative instruction count at each call or return. Otherwise, only print when the matching return is hit. print[/axzodurc] address [address . . .] Print addresses address according to the modier character, as per examine. Valid modiers are: /a, /x, /z, /o, /d, /u, /r, and /c (as per examine). If no modier is specied, the most recent one specied is used. address may be a string, and is printed as-is. For example: print/x "eax = " $eax "\necx = " $ecx "\n" will produce: eax = xxxxxx ecx = yyyyyy ps[/a][/n][/w] A synonym for show all procs. reboot [flags] Reboot, using the optionally supplied boot flags. Note: Limitations of the command line interface preclude specication of a boot string. search[/bhl] address value [mask] [,count] Search memory from address for value. The unit size is specied with a modier character, as per examine. Valid modiers are: /b, /h, and /l. If no modier is specied, /l is used. This command might fail in interesting ways if it doesnt nd value. This is because ddb doesnt always recover from touching bad memory. The optional count limits the search. set $variable [=] expression Set the named variable or register to the value of expression. Valid variable names are described in VARIABLES. show all procs[/a][/n][/w] Display all process information. Valid modiers: /n show process information in a ps(1) style format (this is the default). Information printed includes: process ID, parent process ID, process group, UID, process status, process ags, process command name, and process wait channel message. /a show the kernel virtual addresses of each process proc structure, u-area, and vmspace structure. The vmspace address is also the address of the process vm_map structure, and can be used in the show map command. /w show each process PID, command, system call emulation, wait channel address, and wait channel message. show breaks Display all breakpoints. show buf[/f] address Print the struct buf at address. The /f does nothing at this time. show event[/f] Print all the non-zero evcnt(9) event counters. If /f is specied, all event counters with a count of zero are printed as well.

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

show map[/f] address Print the vm_map at address. If /f is specied, the complete map is printed. show ncache address Dump the namecache list associated with vnode at address. show object[/f] address Print the vm_object at address. If /f is specied, the complete object is printed. show page[/f] address Print the vm_page at address. If /f is specied, the complete page is printed. show pool[/clp] address Print the pool at address. Valid modiers: /c Print the cachelist and its statistics for this pool. /l Print the log entries for this pool. /p Print the pagelist for this pool. show registers[/u] Display the register set. If /u is specied, display user registers instead of kernel registers or the currently save one. Warning: support for /u is machine dependent. If not supported, incorrect information will be displayed. show uvmexp Print a selection of UVM counters and statistics. show vnode[/f] address Print the vnode at address. If /f is specied, the complete vnode is printed. show watches Display all watchpoints. sifting[/F] string Search the symbol tables for all symbols of which string is a substring, and display them. If /F is specied, a character is displayed immediately after each symbol name indicating the type of symbol. For a.out(5)-format symbol tables, absolute symbols display @, text segment symbols display , data segment symbols display +, BSS segment symbols display -, and lename symbols display /. For ELF-format symbol tables, object symbols display +, function symbols display , section symbols display &, and le symbols display /. To sift for a string beginning with a number, escape the rst character with a backslash as: sifting \386 step[/p] [,count] Single-step count times. If /p is specied, print each instruction at each step. Otherwise, only print the last instruction. Warning: depending on the machine type, it may not be possible to single-step through some lowlevel code paths or user-space code. On machines with software-emulated single-stepping (e.g., pmax), stepping through code executed by interrupt handlers will probably do the wrong thing. sync Force a crash dump, and then reboot. trace [/u[l]] [frame-address][,count] Stack trace from frame-address. If /u is specied, trace user-space, otherwise trace kernelspace. count is the number of frames to be traced. If count is omitted, all frames are printed. If

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

/l is specied, the trace is printed and also stored in the kernel message buffer. Warning: user-space stack trace is valid only if the machine dependent code supports it. trace/t[l] [pid][,count] Stack trace by thread (process, on NetBSD) rather than by stack frame address. Note that pid is interpreted using the current radix, whilst ps displays pids in decimal; prex pid with 0t to force it to be interpreted as decimal (see VARIABLES section for radix). If /l is specied, the trace is printed and also stored in the kernel message buffer. Warning: trace by pid is valid only if the machine dependent code supports it. until[/p] Stop at the next call or return instruction. If /p is specied, print the call nesting depth and the cumulative instruction count at each call or return. Otherwise, only print when the matching return is hit. watch address[,size] Set a watchpoint for a region. Execution stops when an attempt to modify the region occurs. size defaults to 4. If you specify a wrong space address, the request is rejected with an error message. Warning: attempts to watch wired kernel memory may cause an unrecoverable error in some systems such as i386. Watchpoints on user addresses work the best. write[/bhl] address expression [expression . . .] Write the expressions at succeeding locations. The unit size is specied with a modier character, as per examine. Valid modiers are: /b, /h, and /l. If no modier is specied, /l is used. Warning: since there is no delimiter between expressions, strange things may occur. Its best to enclose each expression in parentheses. x[/modifier] address[,count] A synonym for examine. MACHINE-SPECIFIC COMMANDS The "glue" code that hooks ddb into the NetBSD kernel for any given port can also add machine specic commands to the ddb command parser. All of these commands are preceded by the command word machine to indicate that they are part of the machine-specic command set (e.g. machine reboot). Some of these commands are: ALPHA halt reboot ARM32 vmstat vnode intrchain panic frame MIPS

Call the PROM monitor to halt the CPU. Call the PROM monitor to reboot the CPU.

Equivalent to vmstat(1) output with "-s" option (statistics). Print out a description of a vnode. Print the list of IRQ handlers. Print the current "panic" string. Given a trap frame address, print out the trap frame.

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

kvtop tlb

Print the physical address for a given kernel virtual address. Print out the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB). Only works in NetBSD kernels compiled with DEBUG option.

SH3 tlb cache frame stack

Print TLB entries Print cache entries Print switch frame and trap frames. Print kernel stack usage. Only works in NetBSD kernels compiled with the KSTACK_DEBUG option.

SPARC prom SPARC64 buf ctx dtlb dtsb kmap

Exit to the Sun PROM monitor.

Print buffer information. Print process context information. Print data translation look-aside buffer context information. Display data translation storage buffer information. Display information about the listed mapping in the kernel pmap. Use the f modier to get a full listing. pcb Display information about the struct pcb listed. pctx Attempt to change process context. page Display the pointer to the struct vm_page for this physical address. phys Display physical memory. pmap Display the pmap. Use the f modier to get a fuller listing. proc Display some information about the process pointed to, or curproc. prom Enter the OFW PROM. pv Display the struct pv_entry pointed to. stack Dump the window stack. Use the u modier to get userland information. tf Display full trap frame state. This is most useful for inclusion with bug reports. ts Display trap state. traptrace Display or set trap trace information. Use the r and f modiers to get reversed and full information, respectively. uvmdump Dumps the UVM histories. watch Set or clear a physical or virtual hardware watchpoint. Pass the address to be watched, or 0 to clear the watchpoint. Append p to the watch point to use the physical watchpoint registers. window Print register window information about given address.

SUN3 and SUN3X abort Drop into monitor via abort (allows continue). halt Exit to Sun PROM monitor as in halt(8). reboot Reboot the machine as in reboot(8). pgmap Given an address, print the address, segment map, page map, and Page Table Entry (PTE). VARIABLES ddb accesses registers and variables as $name. Register names are as per the show registers command. Some variables are sufxed with numbers, and may have a modier following a colon immediately after the variable name. For example, register variables may have a u modier to indicate user register (e.g., $eax:u).

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

DDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

DDB (4)

Built-in variables currently supported are: lines The number of lines. This is used by the more feature. maxoff Addresses are printed as symbol+offset unless offset is greater than maxoff. maxwidth The width of the displayed line. onpanic If non-zero (the default), ddb will be invoked when the kernel panics. If the kernel conguration option options DDB_ONPANIC=0 is used, onpanic will be initialized to off. fromconsole If non-zero (the default), the kernel allows to enter ddb from the console (by break signal or special key sequence). If the kernel conguration option options DDB_FROMCONSOLE=0 is used, fromconsole will be initialized to off. radix Input and output radix. tabstops Tab stop width. All built-in variables are accessible via sysctl(3). EXPRESSIONS Almost all expression operators in C are supported, except , , and unary &. Special rules in ddb are: identifier name of a symbol. It is translated to the address (or value) of it. . and : can be used in the identier. If supported by an object format dependent routine, [filename:]function[:line number],[filename:]variable,and filename[:line number], can be accepted as a symbol. The symbol may be prexed with symbol_table_name:: (e.g., emulator::mach_msg_trap) to specify other than kernel symbols. number . + .. " $name a expr number. Radix is determined by the rst two characters: 0x - hex, 0o - octal, 0t - decimal, otherwise follow current radix. dot next address of the start of the last line examined. Unlike dot or next, this is only changed by the examine or write commands. last address explicitly specied. register name or variable. It is translated to the value of it. It may be followed by a : and modiers as described above. multiple of right-hand side. expression indirection. It may be followed by a : and modiers as described above.

SEE ALSO options(4), sysctl(8) HISTORY The ddb kernel debugger was written as part of the MACH project at Carnegie-Mellon University.

FreeBSD 5.2

July 2, 2003

GDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

GDB (4)

NAME gdb external kernel debugger SYNOPSIS makeoptions DEBUG=-g options DDB options GDB_REMOTE_CHAT DESCRIPTION The gdb kernel debugger is a variation of gdb(1) which understands some aspects of the FreeBSD kernel environment. It can be used in a number of ways: It can be used to examine the memory of the processor on which it runs. It can be used to analyse a processor dump after a panic. It can be used to debug another system interactively via a serial or rewire link. In this mode, the processor can be stopped and single stepped. With a rewire link, it can be used to examine the memory of a remote system without the participation of that system. In this mode, the processor cannot be stopped and single stepped, but it can be of use when the remote system has crashed and is no longer responding.

When used for remote debugging, gdb requires the presence of the ddb(4) kernel debugger. Commands exist to switch between gdb and ddb(4). PREPARING FOR DEBUGGING When debugging kernels, it is practically essential to have built a kernel with debugging symbols ( makeoptions DEBUG=-g ) . It is easiest to perform operations from the kernel build directory, by default /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC. First, ensure you have a copy of the debug macros in the directory: make gdbinit This command performs some transformations on the macros /usr/src/tools/debugscripts to adapt them to the local environment. Inspecting the environment of the local machine To look at and change the contents of the memory of the system you are running on, gdb -k -wcore kernel.debug /dev/mem In this mode, you need the k ag to indicate to gdb(1) that the dump le /dev/mem is a kernel data le. You can look at live data, and if you include the wcore option, you can change it at your peril. The system does not stop (obviously), so a number of things will not work. You can set breakpoints, but you cannot continue execution, so they will not work. Debugging a crash dump By default, crash dumps are stored in the directory /var/crash. Investigate them from the kernel build directory with: gdb -k kernel.debug /var/crash/vmcore.29 In this mode, the system is obviously stopped, so you can only look at it. installed in

FreeBSD 5.2

December 30, 2003

GDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

GDB (4)

Debugging a live system with a remote link In the following discussion, the term local system refers to the system running the debugger, and remote system refers to the live system being debugged. To debug a live system with a remote link, the kernel must be compiled with the option options DDB. The option options BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER enables the debugging machine stop the debugged machine once a connection has been established by pressing C. Debugging a live system with a remote serial link When using a serial port for the remote link on the i386 platform, the serial port must be identied by setting the ag bit 0x80 for the specied interface. Generally, this port will also be used as a serial console (ag bit 0x10), so the entry in /boot/device.hints should be: hint.sio.0.flags="0x90" To share a console and debug connection on a serial line, use the options GDB_REMOTE_CHAT option. Debugging a live system with a remote rewire link As with serial debugging, to debug a live system with a rewire link, the kernel must be compiled with the option options DDB. The options GDB_REMOTE_CHAT is not necessary, since the rewire implementation uses separate ports for the console and debug connection. A number of steps must be performed to set up a rewire link: Ensure that both systems have firewire(4) support, and that the kernel of the remote system includes the dcons(4) and dcons_crom(4) drivers. If they are not compiled into the kernel, load the KLDs: kldload firewire On the remote system only: kldload dcons kldload dcons_crom You should see something like this in the dmesg(8) output of the remote system: fwohci0: BUS reset fwohci0: node_id=0x8800ffc0, gen=2, non CYCLEMASTER mode firewire0: 2 nodes, maxhop <= 1, cable IRM = 1 firewire0: bus manager 1 firewire0: New S400 device ID:00c04f3226e88061 dcons_crom0: <dcons configuration ROM> on firewire0 dcons_crom0: bus_addr 0x22a000 It is a good idea to load these modules at boot time with the following entry in /boot/loader.conf: dcons_crom_enable="YES" This ensures that all three modules are loaded. There is no harm in loading dcons(4) and dcons_crom(4) on the local system, but if you only want to load the firewire(4) module, include the following in /boot/loader.conf: firewire_enable="YES" Next, use fwcontrol(8) to nd the rewire node corresponding to the remote machine. On the local machine you might see: # fwcontrol 2 devices (info_len=2) node EUI64

status

FreeBSD 5.2

December 30, 2003

GDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

GDB (4)

1 0

0x00c04f3226e88061 0x000199000003622b

0 1

The rst node is always the local system, so in this case, node 0 is the remote system. If there are more than two systems, check from the other end to nd which node corresponds to the remote system. On the remote machine, it looks like this: # fwcontrol 2 devices (info_len=2) node EUI64 status 0 0x000199000003622b 0 1 0x00c04f3226e88061 1 Next, establish a rewire connection with dconschat(8): dconschat -br -G 5556 -t 0x000199000003622b 0x000199000003622b is the EUI64 address of the remote node, as determined from the output of fwcontrol(8) above. When started in this manner, dconschat(8) establishes a local tunnel connection from port localhost:5556 to the remote debugger. You can also establish a console port connection with the C option to the same invocation dconschat(8). See the dconschat(8) manpage for further details. The dconschat(8) utility does not return control to the user. It displays error messages and console output for the remote system, so it is a good idea to start it in its own window. Finally, establish connection: # gdb kernel.debug GNU gdb 5.2.1 (FreeBSD) (political statements omitted) Ready to go. Enter tr to connect to the remote target with /dev/cuaa0, tr /dev/cuaa1 to connect to a different port or trf portno to connect to the remote target with the firewire interface. portno defaults to 5556. Type getsyms after connection to load kld symbols. If youre debugging a local system, you can use kldsyms instead to load the kld symbols. Thats a less obnoxious interface. (gdb) trf 0xc21bd378 in ?? () The trf macro assumes a connection on port 5556. If you want to use a different port (by changing the invocation of dconschat(8) above), use the tr macro instead. For example, if you want to use port 4711, run dconschat(8) like this: dconschat -br -G 4711 -t 0x000199000003622b Then establish connection with: (gdb) tr localhost:4711 0xc21bd378 in ?? () Non-cooperative debugging a live system with a remote rewire link In addition to the conventional debugging via rewire described in the previous section, it is possible to debug a remote system without its cooperation, once an initial connection has been established. This corresponds to debugging a local machine using /dev/mem. It can be very useful if a system crashes and the

FreeBSD 5.2

December 30, 2003

GDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

GDB (4)

debugger no longer responds. To use this method, set the sysctl(8) variables hw.rewire.fwmem.eui64_hi and hw.rewire.fwmem.eui64_lo to the upper and lower halves of the EUI64 ID of the remote system, respectively. From the previous example, the remote machine shows: # fwcontrol 2 devices (info_len=2) node EUI64 status 0 0x000199000003622b 0 1 0x00c04f3226e88061 1 Enter: # sysctl -w hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_hi=0x00019900 hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_hi: 0 -> 104704 # sysctl -w hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_lo=0x0003622b hw.firewire.fwmem.eui64_lo: 0 -> 221739 Note that the variables must be explicitly stated in hexadecimal. After this, you can examine the remote machines state with the following input: # gdb -k kernel.debug /dev/fwmem0.0 GNU gdb 5.2.1 (FreeBSD) (messages omitted) Reading symbols from /boot/kernel/dcons.ko...done. Loaded symbols for /boot/kernel/dcons.ko Reading symbols from /boot/kernel/dcons_crom.ko...done. Loaded symbols for /boot/kernel/dcons_crom.ko #0 sched_switch (td=0xc0922fe0) at /usr/src/sys/kern/sched_4bsd.c:621 0xc21bd378 in ?? () In this case, it is not necessary to load the symbols explicitly. The remote system continues to run. COMMANDS The user interface to gdb is via gdb(1), so gdb(1) commands also work. This section discusses only the extensions for kernel debugging that get installed in the kernel build directory. Debugging environment The following macros manipulate the debugging environment: ddb Switch back to ddb(4). This command is only meaningful when performing remote debugging.

getsyms Display kldstat information for the target machine and invite user to paste it back in. This is required because gdb does not allow data to be passed to shell scripts. It is necessary for remote debugging and crash dumps; for local memory debugging use kldsyms instead. kldsyms Read in the symbol tables for the debugging machine. This does not work for remote debugging and crash dumps; use getsyms instead. tr interface Debug a remote system via the specied serial or rewire interface. tr0 tr1 Debug a remote system via serial interface /dev/cuaa0. Debug a remote system via serial interface /dev/cuaa1.

FreeBSD 5.2

December 30, 2003

GDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

GDB (4)

trf

Debug a remote system via rewire interface at default port 5556.

The commands tr0, tr1 and trf are convenience commands which invoke tr. The current process environment The following macros are convenience functions intended to make things easier than the standard gdb(1) commands. f0 f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 xb xi xp xp0 xp1 xp2 xp3 xp4 xs xxp z zs Select stack frame 0 and show assembler-level details. Select stack frame 1 and show assembler-level details. Select stack frame 2 and show assembler-level details. Select stack frame 3 and show assembler-level details. Select stack frame 4 and show assembler-level details. Select stack frame 5 and show assembler-level details. Show 12 words in hex, starting at current ebp value. List the next 10 instructions from the current eip value. Show the register contents and the rst four parameters of the current stack frame. Show the rst parameter of current stack frame in various formats. Show the second parameter of current stack frame in various formats. Show the third parameter of current stack frame in various formats. Show the fourth parameter of current stack frame in various formats. Show the fth parameter of current stack frame in various formats. Show the last 12 words on stack in hexadecimal. Show the register contents and the rst ten parameters. Single step 1 instruction (over calls) and show next instruction. Single step 1 instruction (through calls) and show next instruction.

Examining other processes The following macros access other processes. The gdb debugger does not understand the concept of multiple processes, so they effectively bypass the entire gdb environment. btp pid Show a backtrace for the process pid. btpa btpp Show backtraces for all processes in the system. Show a backtrace for the process previously selected with defproc.

btr ebp Show a backtrace from the ebp address specied. defproc pid Specify the PID of the process for some other commands in this section. fr frame Show frame frame of the stack of the process previously selected with defproc.

FreeBSD 5.2

December 30, 2003

GDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

GDB (4)

pcb proc Show some PCB contents of the process proc. Examining data structures You can use standard gdb(1) commands to look at most data structures. The macros in this section are convenience functions which typically display the data in a more readable format, or which omit less interesting parts of the structure. bp bpd bpl Show information about the buffer header pointed to by the variable bp in the current frame. Show the contents ( char ) of bp->data in the current frame. Show detailed information about the buffer header ( struct bp ) pointed at by the local variable bp.

bpp bp Show summary information about the buffer header ( struct bp ) pointed at by the parameter bp. bx vdev Print a number of elds from the buffer header pointed at in by the pointer bp in the current environment. Show some information of the vnode pointed to by the local variable vp.

Miscellaneous macros checkmem Check unallocated memory for modications. This assumes that the kernel has been compiled with options DIAGNOSTIC This causes the contents of free memory to be set to 0xdeadc0de. dmesg Print the system message buffer. This corresponds to the dmesg(8) utility. This macro used to be called msgbuf. It can take a very long time over a serial line, and it is even slower via rewire or local memory due to inefciencies in gdb. When debugging a crash dump or over rewire, it is not necessary to start gdb to access the message buffer: instead, use an appropriate variation of dmesg -M /var/crash/vmcore.0 -N kernel.debug dmesg -M /dev/fwmem0.0 -N kernel.debug kldstat Equivalent of the kldstat(8) utility without options. pname ps Print the command name of the current process. Show process status. This corresponds in concept, but not in appearance, to the ps(1) utility. When debugging a crash dump or over rewire, it is not necessary to start gdb to display the ps(1) output: instead, use an appropriate variation of ps -M /var/crash/vmcore.0 -N kernel.debug ps -M /dev/fwmem0.0 -N kernel.debug y Kludge for writing macros. When writing macros, it is convenient to paste them back into the gdb window. Unfortunately, if the macro is already dened, gdb insists on asking Redefine foo? It will not give up until you answer y. This command is that answer. It does nothing else except to print a warning message to remind you to remove it again.

FreeBSD 5.2

December 30, 2003

GDB (4)

FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual

GDB (4)

AUTHORS This man page was written by Greg Lehey [email protected]. SEE ALSO gdb(1), ps(1), ddb(4), firewire(4), vinumdebug(4), dconschat(8), dmesg(8), fwcontrol(8), kldload(8) BUGS The gdb(1) debugger was never designed to debug kernels, and it is not a very good match. Many problems exist. The gdb implementation is very inefcient, and many operations are slow. Serial debugging is even slower, and race conditions can make it difcult to run the link at more than 9600 bps. Firewire connections do not have this problem. The debugging macros just growed. In general, the person who wrote them did so while looking for a specic problem, so they may not be general enough, and they may behave badly when used in ways for which they were not intended, even if those ways make sense. Many of these commands only work on the ia32 architecture.

FreeBSD 5.2

December 30, 2003