Set GDB breakpoint in C file - c

Is it possible to add GDB breakpoints in a C files, before compilation? Currently, I have to specify breakpoints after compilation through GDB.
I'm looking for something similar to JavaScript's debugger; statement.

Not as such, but you can insert some helpful function calls:
One option is to create a function:
void break_here ()
{
/* do nothing */
}
then call it wherever you want, but be careful it doesn't get inlined (put it in a different file, or add a "noinline" attribute).
Then, in GDB, just set a breakpoint on break_here, and you're done. If you find it tedious to set that breakpoint every time, you can create a file named .gdbinit in your home directory or in the current working directory that contains the breakpoint command.
Another option that works on Linux is to use a signal:
raise (SIGUSR1);
You could use any signal you like, but it's better to use one that doesn't kill your program (although you can configure GDB to not pass them onto your program, if you choose).

I'm not aware of a way to directly set a breakpoint, but GDB will catch interrupts, so that is one possible solution.
Something like this should work. You'll need to include signal.h:
raise(SIGABRT);

on linux, which I'm assuming you're on since you're using gdb you could make a script to do it with comments in the code
#!/bin/bash
#debug: Script to run programs in gdb with comments to specify break
points
echo "file ./a.out" > run
grep -nrIH "/\*GDB\*/" |
sed "s/\(^[^:]\+:[^:]\+\):.*$/\1/g" |
awk '{print "b" " " $1 }'|
grep -v $(echo $0| sed "s/.*\///g") >> run
gdb --init-command ./run -ex=r
exit 0
then wherever you need a breakpoint, just add /*GDB*/, the script will use grep to find the line numbers and files with those comments, and set a break point on each line of each file it finds them on, then start gdb

Related

(LLDB on MacOs Catalina) Shell Expansion Failed

When trying to use the r or run commands in lldb I get an error like this: error: shell expansion failed (reason: invalid JSON). consider launching with 'process launch'.
It works when I just use process launch but I really do not feel like doing that.
Is there any way I could make either an alias or make shell expansions not fail?
The way lldb does shell expansion is to run a little tool called lldb-argdumper (it is in Xcode.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/LLDB.framework/Resources on macOS) with the command arguments that you passed. lldb-argdumper wraps the contents of argv as JSON, and writes that to stdout. lldb then parses the JSON back into args and inserts the args one by oneinto the argc/argv array when it launches the process.
Something in the output is not getting properly wrapped. You can probably see what it is by looking at the output of lldb-argdumper with your arguments. Whatever it is, it's a bug, so if you can reproduce it please file with your example with http://bugs.llvm.org.
(lldb) command alias run-no-shell process launch -X 0 --
will produce an alias that doesn't do shell expansion. You can also put this in your ~/.lldbinit.
I ran into this recently. TL;DR: make sure your shell does not echo anything during initialization. Run <your-shell> -c date to confirm; only the date should be printed.
The problem was that my shell's initialization file was echoing some stuff, which was getting prepended to lldb-argdumper's JSON output. (lldb doesn't run lldb-argdumper directly; it invokes your default shell to run lldb-argdumper.)
Specifically, I use fish as my shell, which does not have separate initialization paths for interactive and non-interactive sessions. (See this issue for discussion of whether this is good.) bash and zsh have separate init files for interactive/non-interactive sessions, which makes avoiding this problem slightly easier.

Is there a way to execute compiled C code from inside a bash script?

Essentially, I wish to call compiled C code from inside a bash script. I want to be able to call the ./a.out from any directory and have it be executed.
This all stems from something pretty simple. I made a curses program that is a screensaver for a terminal. I wish to be able to call a bash command screensaver and I want that to call the c code via bash. I want to be able to call it from anywhere in the filesystem. I am running on a 2013 Macbook but I think this is more of an infamiliarity with C issue rather than a hardware issue, I can provide more details if needed.
File is here:
/Users/User/screensaver/screensaver.c
cd /Users/User/screensaver
gcc screensaver.c creates a.out
I can then run
./a.out
And the code runs.
I have tried calling ./Users/User/screensaver/a.out among other things.
This doesn't work and it just says that the file doesn't exist. I've tried using exec and source but nothing has worked. Surely there must be a way to call this from somewhere else right? I know I could theoretically save my current directory as an environment variable, cd into the dir, ./a.out, then on quit cd back into the saved dir, but that seems like to much struggle for what its worth.
Edit: I saw that I could theoretically put it in the my bin and compiled with -o. I haven't tried it, but I don't want to do that because this code is still in development so I don't want to have to compiled and move it every time.
This worked:
"Try to invoke /Users/User/screensaver/a.out without putting a dot at the beginning of the path. There is a paticular security reason why you need to specify ./a.out rather than a.out when you are in the directory which holds the executable."
-tshiono

How do you extract data from gdb

How do you extract data from gdb so you can examine it in another program?
I am using gdb to debug a program. To see what is in array udata, I have created a source file called printudata with the following contents:
print udata[0]
print udata[1]
print udata[2]
...
print udata[143]
From within gdb I can execute that using source command and get output like this:
(gdb) source printudata
$399 = 1
$400 = 2.5
$401 = .3-10
...
$542 = <number>
So far, that is the best I can do for examining memory.
The only thing I can think of to do with this is (learn regular expressions and) strip off everything up to the equal sign so I can paste this into a spreadsheet which will tell me whether it's correct.
Is this the really the best way to get output from gdb? I am learning all this on my own and only have the basic, free tools that come with Linux (and am a beginner with all the above listed technologies)
You can print an array if it is really an array like this:
p udata
But, if udata is really a pointer, then you can use a cast to make gdb print it like an array.
p *(double(*)[144])udata
If you really want the line at a time output of your current "script", you can define a function and use a loop:
define print_udata
set $i=0
while ($i < 144)
p udata[$i]
set $i=$i+1
end
end
To log the output to a file, you can enable/disable logging:
set logging on
...gdb commands...
set logging off
The output will be in a file called gdb.txt.
In addition to the above, gdb has the "output" and "printf" commands. These don't enter the value into the value history, and they let you control the output much more precisely.
gdb has built-in scripting in both its own scripting language and in python. You can even script GDB from within a python program. You can use any of those options to write the data to a file.
More information about python & gdb here.

Building simple shell script which executes program passed as argument

I am building a program which helps in memory debugging of C programs. I call
execlp("gnome-terminal","gnome-terminal","-e",command,(char*)0);
to open a new terminal window where the program to be debugged runs. I do this to not have my debugging info intermixed with the users program output. Because I need to set up an environmental variable before running the users program, command var is actually the name of the shell script where I pass the users program as the first arg.
Here is my script:
#!/bin/bash
export LD_PRELOAD="./mylib.so"
$1
This works fine for programs with no arguments but what happens if the user also supplies args with his program?
For example I wish to call my script like that :
myScript.sh usersProgram arg1 arg2 etc
How can I correctly run the users program inside the script and pass all the arguments to it?
Thank you
Use "$#", which will handle all arguments properly.
Assuming that args to program always start from the 2nd arg, I'd suggest doing it like this:
#!/bin/bash
PROG=$1
shift
$PROG "$#"
Practically, just specifying "$#" instead of the three lines above will also work. But this way, you can easily do some manipulation based on $PROG before actually executing it.

How to redirect output away from /dev/null

I have an application that runs the a command as below:
<command> <switches> >& /dev/null
I can configure <command>, but I have no control over <switches> . All the output generated by this command goes to /dev/null. I want the output to be visible on screen or redirected to a log file.
I tried to use freopen() and related functions to reopen /dev/null to another file, but could not get it working.
Do you have any other ideas? Is this possible at all?
Thanks for your time.
PS: I am working on Linux.
Terrible Hack:
use a text editor in binary mode open the app, find '/dev/null/' and replace it with a string of the same length
e.g '~/tmp/log'
make a backup first
be carefull
be very carefull
did I mention the backup?
Since you can modify the command you run you can use a simple shell script as a wrapper to redirect the output to a file.
#!/bin/bash
"$#" >> logfile
If you save this in your path as capture_output.sh then you can add capture_output.sh to the start of your command to append the output of your program to logfile.
Append # at the end of your command so it becomes <command> # >& /dev/null, thus commenting out the undesired part.
Your application is probably running a shell and passing it that command line.
You need to make it run a script written by you. That script will replace >/dev/null in the command line with >>/your/log and call the real shell with the modified command line.
The first step is to change the shell used by the application. Changing the environment variable SHELL should suffice, i.e., run your application as
SHELL=/home/user/bin/myshell theApp
If that doesn't work, try momentarily linking /bin/sh to your script.
myshell will call the original shell, but after pattern-replacing the parameters:
#!/bin/bash
sh ${1+"${#/\>\/dev\/null/>>\/your\/log}"}
Something along these lines should work.
You can do this with an already running process by using gdb. See the following page: http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/02/27/redirecting-output-from-a-running-process/
Can you create an alias for that command? If so, alias it to another command that dumps output to a file.
The device file /dev/tty references your application's controlling terminal - if that hasn't changed, then this should work:
freopen("/dev/tty", "w", stdout);
freopen("/dev/tty", "w", stderr);
Alternatively, you can reopen them to point to a log file:
freopen("/var/log/myapp.log", "a", stdout);
freopen("/var/log/myapp.err", "a", stderr);
EDIT: This is NOT a good idea and certainly not worth trying unless you know what this can break. It works for me, may work for you as well.
Ok, This is a really bad hack and probably not worth doing. Assuming that none of the other commands works, and you simply do not have access to the binary/application (which contains the command with /dev/null) and you cannot re-direct the output to other file (by replacing /dev/null).
Then, you can delete /dev/null ($> rm /dev/null) and create your own file at its place (preferably with a soft link) where all the data can be directed. When you are done, you can create the /dev/null once again using following command:
$> mknod -m 666 /dev/null c 1 3
Just to be very clear, this is a bad hack and certainly requires root permissions to work. High chances that your re-directed file may contain data from many other applications/binaries which are running and use /dev/null as sink.
It may not exactly redirect, but it allows to get the output wherever it's being sent
strace -ewrite -p $PID
It's not that cleen (shows lines like: write(#,) ), but works! (and is single-line :D ) You might also dislike the fact, that arguments are abbreviated. To control that use -s parameter that sets the maxlength of strings displayed.
It catches all streams, so You might want to filter that somehow.
You can filter it:
strace -ewrite -p $PID 2>&1 | grep "write(1"
shows only descriptor 1 calls. 2>&1 is to redirect stderr to stdout, as strace writes to stderr by default.
In perl, if you just want to redirect STDOUT to something slightly more useful, you can just do something like:
open STDOUT, '>>', '/var/log/myscript.log';
open STDERR, '>>', '/var/log/myscript.err';
at the beginning of your script, and that'll redirect it for the rest of your script.
Along the lines of e-t172's answer, can you set the last switch to (or append to it):
; echo
If you can put something inline before passing things to /dev/null (not sure if you are dealing with a hardcoded command), you could use tee to redirect to something of your choice.
Example from Wikipedia which allows escalation of a command:
echo "Body of file..." | sudo tee root_owned_file > /dev/null
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tee_(command)

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