... instead of relying on libthread_db.
I wrote a test that attaches to a program that constantly spawns
short-lived threads, which exposed several issues. This is one of
them.
On Linux, we need to attach to all threads of a process (thread group)
individually. We currently rely on libthread_db to list the threads,
but that is problematic, because libthread_db relies on reading data
structures out of the inferior (which may well be corrupted). If
threads are being created or exiting just while we try to attach, we
may trip on inconsistencies in the inferior's thread list. To work
around that, when we see a seemingly corrupt list, we currently retry
a few times:
static void
thread_db_find_new_threads_2 (ptid_t ptid, int until_no_new)
{
...
if (until_no_new)
{
/* Require 4 successive iterations which do not find any new threads.
The 4 is a heuristic: there is an inherent race here, and I have
seen that 2 iterations in a row are not always sufficient to
"capture" all threads. */
...
That heuristic may well fail, and when it does, we end up with threads
in the program that aren't under GDB's control. That's obviously bad
and results in quite mistifying failures, like e.g., the process dying
for seeminly no reason when a thread that wasn't attached trips on a
breakpoint.
There's really no reason to rely on libthread_db for this nowadays
when we have /proc mounted. In that case, which is the usual case, we
can list the LWPs from /proc/PID/task/. In fact, GDBserver is already
doing this. The patch factors out that code that knows to walk the
task/ directory out of GDBserver, and makes GDB use it too.
Like GDBserver, the patch makes GDB attach to LWPs and _not_ wait for
them to stop immediately. Instead, we just tag the LWP as having an
expected stop. Because we can only set the ptrace options when the
thread stops, we need a new flag in the lwp structure to keep track of
whether we've already set the ptrace options, just like in GDBserver.
Note that nothing issues any ptrace command to the threads between the
PTRACE_ATTACH and the stop, so this is safe (unlike one scenario
described in gdbserver's linux-low.c).
When we attach to a program that has threads exiting while we attach,
it's easy to race with a thread just exiting as we try to attach to
it, like:
#1 - get current list of threads
#2 - attach to each listed thread
#3 - ooops, attach failed, thread is already gone
As this is pretty normal, we shouldn't be issuing a scary warning in
step #3.
When #3 happens, PTRACE_ATTACH usually fails with ESRCH, but sometimes
we'll see EPERM as well. That happens when the kernel still has the
thread in its task list, but the thread is marked as dead.
Unfortunately, EPERM is ambiguous and we'll get it also on other
scenarios where the thread isn't dead, and in those cases, it's useful
to get a warning. To distiguish the cases, when we get an EPERM
failure, we open /proc/PID/status, and check the thread's state -- if
the /proc file no longer exists, or the state is "Z (Zombie)" or "X
(Dead)", we ignore the EPERM error silently; otherwise, we'll warn.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a kernel race here. Sometimes I get
EPERM, and then the /proc state still indicates "R (Running)"... If
we wait a bit and retry, we do end up seeing X or Z state, or get an
ESRCH. I thought of making GDB retry the attach a few times, but even
with a 500ms wait and 4 retries, I still see the warning sometimes. I
haven't been able to identify the kernel path that causes this yet,
but in any case, it looks like a kernel bug to me. As this just
results failure to suppress a warning that we've been printing since
about forever anyway, I'm just making the test cope with it, and issue
an XFAIL.
gdb/gdbserver/
2015-01-09 Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>
* linux-low.c (linux_attach_fail_reason_string): Move to
nat/linux-ptrace.c, and rename.
(linux_attach_lwp): Update comment.
(attach_proc_task_lwp_callback): New function.
(linux_attach): Adjust to rename and use
linux_proc_attach_tgid_threads.
(linux_attach_fail_reason_string): Delete declaration.
gdb/
2015-01-09 Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>
* linux-nat.c (attach_proc_task_lwp_callback): New function.
(linux_nat_attach): Use linux_proc_attach_tgid_threads.
(wait_lwp, linux_nat_filter_event): If not set yet, set the lwp's
ptrace option flags.
* linux-nat.h (struct lwp_info) <must_set_ptrace_flags>: New
field.
* nat/linux-procfs.c: Include <dirent.h>.
(linux_proc_get_int): New parameter "warn". Handle it.
(linux_proc_get_tgid): Adjust.
(linux_proc_get_tracerpid): Rename to ...
(linux_proc_get_tracerpid_nowarn): ... this.
(linux_proc_pid_get_state): New function, factored out from
(linux_proc_pid_has_state): ... this. Add new parameter "warn"
and handle it.
(linux_proc_pid_is_gone): New function.
(linux_proc_pid_is_stopped): Adjust.
(linux_proc_pid_is_zombie_maybe_warn)
(linux_proc_pid_is_zombie_nowarn): New functions.
(linux_proc_pid_is_zombie): Use
linux_proc_pid_is_zombie_maybe_warn.
(linux_proc_attach_tgid_threads): New function.
* nat/linux-procfs.h (linux_proc_get_tgid): Update comment.
(linux_proc_get_tracerpid): Rename to ...
(linux_proc_get_tracerpid_nowarn): ... this, and update comment.
(linux_proc_pid_is_gone): New declaration.
(linux_proc_pid_is_zombie): Update comment.
(linux_proc_pid_is_zombie_nowarn): New declaration.
(linux_proc_attach_lwp_func): New typedef.
(linux_proc_attach_tgid_threads): New declaration.
* nat/linux-ptrace.c (linux_ptrace_attach_fail_reason): Adjust to
use nowarn functions.
(linux_ptrace_attach_fail_reason_string): Move here from
gdbserver/linux-low.c and rename.
(ptrace_supports_feature): If the current ptrace options are not
known yet, check them now, instead of asserting.
* nat/linux-ptrace.h (linux_ptrace_attach_fail_reason_string):
Declare.
This patch enhances GDB on GNU/Linux systems in the situation where
we are debugging an inferior that was created from GDB (as opposed
to attached to), by asking the kernel to kill the inferior if GDB
terminates without doing it itself.
This would typically happen when GDB encounters a problem and
crashes, or when it gets killed by an external process. This can
be observed by starting a program under GDB, and then killing
GDB with signal 9. After GDB is killed, the inferior still remains.
This patch also fixes GDBserver similarly.
This fix is conditional on the kernel supporting the PTRACE_O_EXITKILL
feature. On older kernels, the behavior remains unchanged.
gdb/ChangeLog:
* nat/linux-ptrace.h (PTRACE_O_EXITKILL): Define if not
already defined.
(linux_enable_event_reporting): Add parameter "attached".
* nat/linux-ptrace.c (linux_test_for_exitkill): New forward
declaration. New function.
(linux_check_ptrace_features): Add linux_test_for_exitkill call.
(linux_enable_event_reporting): Add new parameter "attached".
Do not call ptrace with the PTRACE_O_EXITKILL if ATTACHED is
nonzero.
* linux-nat.c (linux_init_ptrace): Add parameter "attached".
Use it. Update function description.
(linux_child_post_attach, linux_child_post_startup_inferior):
Update call to linux_enable_event_reporting.
gdb/gdbserver/ChangeLog:
* linux-low.c (linux_low_filter_event): Update call to
linux_enable_event_reporting following the addition of
a new parameter to that function.
Tested on x86_64-linux, native and native-gdbserver.
I also verified by hand that the inferior gets killed when killing
GDB in the "run" case, while the inferior remains in the "attach"
case. Same for GDBserver.
This commit implements functions for identifying and extracting extended
ptrace event information from a Linux wait status. These are just
convenience functions intended to hide the ">> 16" used to extract the
event from the wait status word, replacing the hard-coded shift with a more
descriptive function call. This is preparatory work for implementation of
follow-fork and detach-on-fork for extended-remote linux targets.
gdb/ChangeLog:
* linux-nat.c (linux_handle_extended_wait): Call
linux_ptrace_get_extended_event.
(wait_lwp): Call linux_is_extended_waitstatus.
(linux_nat_filter_event): Call linux_ptrace_get_extended_event
and linux_is_extended_waitstatus.
* nat/linux-ptrace.c (linux_test_for_tracefork): Call
linux_ptrace_get_extended_event.
(linux_ptrace_get_extended_event): New function.
(linux_is_extended_waitstatus): New function.
* nat/linux-ptrace.h (linux_ptrace_get_extended_event)
(linux_is_extended_waitstatus): New declarations.
gdb/gdbserver/ChangeLog:
* linux-low.c (handle_extended_wait): Call
linux_ptrace_get_extended_event.
(get_stop_pc, get_detach_signal, linux_low_filter_event): Call
linux_is_extended_waitstatus.
---
This patch removes some GDBSERVER checks from nat/linux-ptrace.c.
Currently the code uses a compile-time check to decide whether some
flags should be used. This changes the code to instead let users of
the module specify an additional set of flags; and then changes gdb's
linux-nat.c to call this function. At some later date, when the back
ends are fully merged, we will be able to remove this function again.
gdb/
2014-07-24 Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>
Gary Benson <gbenson@redhat.com>
* nat/linux-ptrace.c (additional_flags): New global.
(linux_test_for_tracesysgood, linux_test_for_tracefork): Use
additional_flags; don't check GDBSERVER.
(linux_ptrace_set_additional_flags): New function.
* nat/linux-ptrace.h (linux_ptrace_set_additional_flags):
Declare.
* linux-nat.c (_initialize_linux_nat): Call
linux_ptrace_set_additional_flags.
