Kernel Debugging of FreeBSD

This document describes kernel debugging in FreeBSD. The main source of this is in the FreeBSD handbook section on kernel debugging, sections 22.3 and 22.4. This document is merely an appendix to that information for specifics relevant to our lab. I suggest you read the documentation there to understand the main steps and then read over these notes.

Setting up a debug session

Connect a serial cable between the machine you want to debug, let's call it KERNEL, and a convenient FreeBSD machine, DEBUG. You can pick the closest one and just telnet to it from your workstation.

Once you have the serial cable you just need to make sure you have permission to the serial device (/dev/cuaa0 or /dev/cuaa1) on DEBUG. Normally this device's permissions are read and write for owner and group only, with a group of uucp. I just added myself to the group uucp in /etc/group.

I have also found you don't have to start the machine you want to debug with the -d switch unless you want to debug something that occurs at startup. Using the hotkey sequence, and typing gdb also seems to work fine. Just make sure you're running the same kernel that you have the local symbol table and source for and that it was prepared as specified in the documentation.

More tips:

I have trouble with bounce buffers when using a debug kernel. Here are three things to do if you're crashing because of those when you try to run a debug kernel:

One other thing (just because I spent a day or two figuring it out): Don't assume vars are initialized to zero by default. Don't even assume they get the same default value on consecutive calls to the same function. Yes, I know we're not supposed to assume this anyway.

Summary


Other DiRT documents
Author: Mark Parris
Last updated: February 23, 1998