Lectures on Operating Systems (Mythili Vutukuru, IIT Bombay)

Introduction to Debugging Tools

In this lab, we will learn to use simple debugging tools like gdb and valgrind. You are provided
with a few buggy programs with this lab: pointers.cpp, fibonacci.cpp, and memory bugs.c.
You are expected to debug them and demonstrate your understanding of debugging tools during your
evaluation.

Part A: Debugging with GDB

A debugger is a program that runs other programs, with the user being allowed to exercise control over
how these programs run. Users can insert breaks in the program, examine variables and so on, during
program execution. GNU Debugger, which is also called gdb, is the most popular debugger for UNIX
systems to debug C/C++ programs. GDB can only be used to find runtime or logical errors. Please note
that compile time errors are detected by the compiler and not a debugger. In this part of the assignment
you will use GDB to debug simple logical errors and a segmentation fault runtime error.

How to use GDB

The first step to using GDB is to install it on your computers. Steps for installation can be found online,
and an example link is here:

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/gnu debugger/installing gdb.htm

Before using GDB you will have to compile your program using gcc or g++ to generate an executable.
The -g flag is particularly important as it generates debugging information that gdb can use.

g++ filename -g -o exectable name

GDB is invoked with the shell command gdb. Once started, it reads commands from the terminal until
you tell it to exit with the GDB command quit. You can get online help from gdb itself by using the
command help. You can run gdb with no arguments or options; but the most common way to start
GDB is with commandline arguments, specifying an executable program as shown below:

gdb executable name

The command above will attach gdb to your executable and open the gdb shell in which you can write
commands to debug your program.

1
Here are some of the most frequently used GDB commands:

break [file:]function
Set a breakpoint at function (in file).

break filename:linenumber
Set a breakpoint at a line number in a file.

run [arglist]
Start your program (with arglist, if specified).

bt
Backtrace: display the program stack.

print expr
Display the value of an expression.

c
Continue running your program (after stopping, e.g. at a breakpoint).

next
Execute next program line (after stopping), with stepping over any function calls in the line.

step
Execute next program line (after stopping), with stepping into any function calls in the line.

list [file:]function
type the text of the program in the vicinity of where it is presently stopped.

help [name]
Show information about the GDB command name, or general information about using GDB.

quit
Exit from GDB.

Note: The above information is sufficient to attempt the exercises in this lab. For more information,
please refer to the man page of GDB.

2
Exercises
1. Debug the pointers.cpp program given to you using GDB. The program contains some pointer
related operations. A bug has been deliberately introduced in the code so that it generates a
segmentation fault. Your task is to use GDB to find the line number of the wrong statement.
Please make use of the GDB commands provided above in order to find the bug.

2. Debug the fibonacci.cpp program given to you using GDB. This program is supposed to print fi-
bonacci numbers until a certain value of n. However, there is a logical error introduced in the code
which causes it to print wrong output. Your task is to use GDB to debug the program. You must
insert suitable breakpoints, pause program execution, print intermediate values of variables from
GDB, and monitor the execution step by step in order to find the logical error. Even if you can
identify the error without stepping through the code, you must be able to demonstrate the process
of debugging using GDB during your evaluation.

3
Part B: Memory Check with Valgrind
Valgrind is a memory mismanagement detector. It helps you identify memory leaks, deallocation errors,
use of uninitialized memory, and various other such memory usage errors. In fact, Valgrind is a wrapper
around a collection of tools that do many other things, e.g., cache profiling. However, here we focus on
the default tool, memcheck.

How to use Valgrind?

The first step to using Valgrind is to install it using a command like the following on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install valgrind

Compile your program using gcc or g++ and generate an executable using the -g flag.

g++ filename -g −−no-warnings -o executable name

You can now run Valgrind against your executable to figure out memory related bugs in your program
using the following command (see the man page to learn more about the various options.)

valgrind −−tool=memcheck −−leak-check=yes −−show-reachable=yes −−num-callers=20

executable-name

Exercise
A program memory bugs.c is provided to you. This program is riddled with memory bugs. You may be
able to find some bugs just by looking at the code also. Valgrind can help you find these bugs automat-
ically. Your job is to compile the program using the command provided above and use Valgrind to find
the possible issues present in the program. You should first understand the different issues Valgrind can
detect, and then use the command given above to find the issues present in the program. You might be
asked to provide possible reasons and fixes for those issues during your evaluation.

4
Submission instructions
• You must submit a text/pdf file briefly describing your debugging procedure for the questions
above.

• Place this file and any other files you wish to submit in your submission directory, with the direc-
tory name being your roll number (say, 12345678).

• Tar and gzip the directory using the command tar -zcvf 12345678.tar.gz 12345678
to produce a single compressed file of your submission directory. Submit this tar gzipped file on
Moodle.