KDB is a built-in kernel debugger.
This debugger is part of the linux kernel and provides a means of examining kernel memory and data structures while the system is operational. Additional commands may be easily added to format and display essential system data structures given an identifier or address of the data structure. Current command set allows complete control of kernel operations including single-stepping a processor, stopping upon execution of a specific instruction, stopping upon access (or modification) of a specific virtual memory location, stopping upon access to a register in the input-output address space, stack tracebacks for the current active task as well as for all other tasks (by process id), instruction disassembly, et. al.
To use the kernel debugger, download and unzip the patch and apply the patch as normal to your linux source tree.
$ cd linux
$ patch -p1 < kdb-xxx
$ make *config
Configure the new kernel ensuring that the CONFIG_KDB configuration option is enabled (via xconfig, menuconfig, oldconfig or config make options). We also recommend CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER for better debugging, although that option uses an extra register and generates slightly slower kernel code.
NOTE: The 'bp' command is non-functional in v1.1. The 'bph' and 'bpha' commands should be used instead. 'bp' works in kdb v1.2.
For 2.2 series kernels, use the kdb_v0.6-2.2.13 patch available in the download directory. SGI is not upgrading kdb for 2.2 kernels at the moment. If anybody wants to backport kdb v1.3 to a 2.2 kernel, please send patches or URLs to the kdb mailing list.
Documentation for the kernel debugger and manual pages for the kernel debugger commands will be located in the kdb subdirectory of the Documentation directory in the patched source tree.
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