[Kgdb-bugreport] Kgdb on RH 7.0

[Nathan G. <ne...@br...>]

Hello,

I've recently been using kgdb to do kernel debugging. I've encountered
a number of issues and problems that I'd like to bring up. Apologies
if some of these seem trivial.

I've been using the web page http://kgdb.sourceforge.net/ as my reference.
In the "What's new" section, the latest dates are in January 2001. I
presume these are supposed to be 2002, based on the ordering, and the
reference to RedHat 7.2.

My debugging thus far has been for RedHat 7.0 (2.2.16-22). I see version
numbers listed in the "What's new" section. I have no idea what version
of kgdb I am using. It is a version that that was recommended by
a support person from RedHat, and has dates of 10/2000. It came from
ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/kgdb/download/ .

I've found the following:

The website says that the appropriate version of modutils (2.3.19 or later)
is
already installed on 7.0. This is not true. That comes with 2.3.14-3.

The website recommends using a particular development version of gdb,
rather than a released one, in order to get around some symbol problems.
I used the one they recommended, but I was having symbol problems. I
downloaded the source to the latest gdb (5.1.1) and compiled it. It works
much better. I am still having some symbol problems, though. I am debugging
a module.

After loading into gdb the script created by loadmodule.sh, many of
my symbols are visible. Others, are not. The ones not visible seem to
be uninitialized globals. I get an error something like "the address
of symbol "xxx" is unknown". If I instead type in a garbage name, it
tells me there is no symbol by that name in the current context, which
is different. Is there something else I need to do in order for this
to work?

It may be related that when I load the script, I get the following errors
regarding two of the sections it is trying to initialize:
__ksymtab not found
__archdata not found


Finally, assuming I can get this working for RH7.0, is there any reason why
this wouldn't work for RH 6.2?

				Thanks,
				Nathan