linux - Debugging shared libraries with gdbserver

Question

I am using gdbserver on target and CodeSourcery IDE. My hardware is a gumstix with a omap3530.

I can step through code in my main application but if I attempt to step into a function in a shared library I get memory address and a debugger terminates.

This is my library that is compiled and copied to the /lib folder on the target system.(it does have debug symbols) I have attempted to use the .gbdinit file to set solib-absolute-prefix /lib

Here are the warnings from the gdb trace:

903,056 13-gdb-set sysroot-on-target /lib
903,065 13^done
903,065 (gdb) 
903,065 14-target-select remote 192.168.1.101:2345
903,114 =thread-group-started,id="i1",pid="42000"
903,114 =thread-created,id="1",group-id="i1"
903,115 15-list-thread-groups --available
903,120 16-list-thread-groups
903,128 &"warning: Unable to find dynamic linker breakpoint function.
GDB will be unable to debug shared library initializers
and track explicitly loaded dynamic code."
903,128 &"
"

Which leads to

903,395 &"Error while mapping shared library sections:
"
903,397 &"/lib/libCoreLib.so: Invalid argument.
"
903,399 =library-loaded,id="/lib/libCoreLib.so",target-name="/lib/libCoreLib.so",hostname="/lib/libCoreLib.so",low-address="0x0",high-address="0x0",symbols-loaded="0",thread-group="i1"

Answer 1

You can debug with the library installed on your host, provided the debugging machine is also the development machine. In that case, you use set sysroot instead of set sysroot-on-target. For example :

set sysroot /home/username/.../rootfs/

where /home/username/.../rootfs/ contains a copy of your target filesystem

I think you should also specify / instead of /lib