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authorPedro Alves <pedro@palves.net>2021-11-12 20:50:29 +0000
committerPedro Alves <pedro@palves.net>2023-11-13 14:16:09 +0000
commit0d36baa9af0d9929c96b89a184a469c432c68b0d (patch)
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parent6a534f85cbdb065a307aa96fbbb670948ee135c8 (diff)
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Step over clone syscall w/ breakpoint, TARGET_WAITKIND_THREAD_CLONED
(A good chunk of the problem statement in the commit log below is Andrew's, adjusted for a different solution, and for covering displaced stepping too. The testcase is mostly Andrew's too.) This commit addresses bugs gdb/19675 and gdb/27830, which are about stepping over a breakpoint set at a clone syscall instruction, one is about displaced stepping, and the other about in-line stepping. Currently, when a new thread is created through a clone syscall, GDB sets the new thread running. With 'continue' this makes sense (assuming no schedlock): - all-stop mode, user issues 'continue', all threads are set running, a newly created thread should also be set running. - non-stop mode, user issues 'continue', other pre-existing threads are not affected, but as the new thread is (sort-of) a child of the thread the user asked to run, it makes sense that the new threads should be created in the running state. Similarly, if we are stopped at the clone syscall, and there's no software breakpoint at this address, then the current behaviour is fine: - all-stop mode, user issues 'stepi', stepping will be done in place (as there's no breakpoint to step over). While stepping the thread of interest all the other threads will be allowed to continue. A newly created thread will be set running, and then stopped once the thread of interest has completed its step. - non-stop mode, user issues 'stepi', stepping will be done in place (as there's no breakpoint to step over). Other threads might be running or stopped, but as with the continue case above, the new thread will be created running. The only possible issue here is that the new thread will be left running after the initial thread has completed its stepi. The user would need to manually select the thread and interrupt it, this might not be what the user expects. However, this is not something this commit tries to change. The problem then is what happens when we try to step over a clone syscall if there is a breakpoint at the syscall address. - For both all-stop and non-stop modes, with in-line stepping: + user issues 'stepi', + [non-stop mode only] GDB stops all threads. In all-stop mode all threads are already stopped. + GDB removes s/w breakpoint at syscall address, + GDB single steps just the thread of interest, all other threads are left stopped, + New thread is created running, + Initial thread completes its step, + [non-stop mode only] GDB resumes all threads that it previously stopped. There are two problems in the in-line stepping scenario above: 1. The new thread might pass through the same code that the initial thread is in (i.e. the clone syscall code), in which case it will fail to hit the breakpoint in clone as this was removed so the first thread can single step, 2. The new thread might trigger some other stop event before the initial thread reports its step completion. If this happens we end up triggering an assertion as GDB assumes that only the thread being stepped should stop. The assert looks like this: infrun.c:5899: internal-error: int finish_step_over(execution_control_state*): Assertion `ecs->event_thread->control.trap_expected' failed. - For both all-stop and non-stop modes, with displaced stepping: + user issues 'stepi', + GDB starts the displaced step, moves thread's PC to the out-of-line scratch pad, maybe adjusts registers, + GDB single steps the thread of interest, [non-stop mode only] all other threads are left as they were, either running or stopped. In all-stop, all other threads are left stopped. + New thread is created running, + Initial thread completes its step, GDB re-adjusts its PC, restores/releases scratchpad, + [non-stop mode only] GDB resumes the thread, now past its breakpoint. + [all-stop mode only] GDB resumes all threads. There is one problem with the displaced stepping scenario above: 3. When the parent thread completed its step, GDB adjusted its PC, but did not adjust the child's PC, thus that new child thread will continue execution in the scratch pad, invoking undefined behavior. If you're lucky, you see a crash. If unlucky, the inferior gets silently corrupted. What is needed is for GDB to have more control over whether the new thread is created running or not. Issue #1 above requires that the new thread not be allowed to run until the breakpoint has been reinserted. The only way to guarantee this is if the new thread is held in a stopped state until the single step has completed. Issue #3 above requires that GDB is informed of when a thread clones itself, and of what is the child's ptid, so that GDB can fixup both the parent and the child. When looking for solutions to this problem I considered how GDB handles fork/vfork as these have some of the same issues. The main difference between fork/vfork and clone is that the clone events are not reported back to core GDB. Instead, the clone event is handled automatically in the target code and the child thread is immediately set running. Note we have support for requesting thread creation events out of the target (TARGET_WAITKIND_THREAD_CREATED). However, those are reported for the new/child thread. That would be sufficient to address in-line stepping (issue #1), but not for displaced-stepping (issue #3). To handle displaced-stepping, we need an event that is reported to the _parent_ of the clone, as the information about the displaced step is associated with the clone parent. TARGET_WAITKIND_THREAD_CREATED includes no indication of which thread is the parent that spawned the new child. In fact, for some targets, like e.g., Windows, it would be impossible to know which thread that was, as thread creation there doesn't work by "cloning". The solution implemented here is to model clone on fork/vfork, and introduce a new TARGET_WAITKIND_THREAD_CLONED event. This event is similar to TARGET_WAITKIND_FORKED and TARGET_WAITKIND_VFORKED, except that we end up with a new thread in the same process, instead of a new thread of a new process. Like FORKED and VFORKED, THREAD_CLONED waitstatuses have a child_ptid property, and the child is held stopped until GDB explicitly resumes it. This addresses the in-line stepping case (issues #1 and #2). The infrun code that handles displaced stepping fixup for the child after a fork/vfork event is thus reused for THREAD_CLONE, with some minimal conditions added, addressing the displaced stepping case (issue #3). The native Linux backend is adjusted to unconditionally report TARGET_WAITKIND_THREAD_CLONED events to the core. Following the follow_fork model in core GDB, we introduce a target_follow_clone target method, which is responsible for making the new clone child visible to the rest of GDB. Subsequent patches will add clone events support to the remote protocol and gdbserver. displaced_step_in_progress_thread becomes unused with this patch, but a new use will reappear later in the series. To avoid deleting it and readding it back, this patch marks it with attribute unused, and the latter patch removes the attribute again. We need to do this because the function is static, and with no callers, the compiler would warn, (error with -Werror), breaking the build. This adds a new gdb.threads/stepi-over-clone.exp testcase, which exercises stepping over a clone syscall, with displaced stepping vs inline stepping, and all-stop vs non-stop. We already test stepping over clone syscalls with gdb.base/step-over-syscall.exp, but this test uses pthreads, while the other test uses raw clone, and this one is more thorough. The testcase passes on native GNU/Linux, but fails against GDBserver. GDBserver will be fixed by a later patch in the series. Co-authored-by: Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com> Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=19675 Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27830 Change-Id: I95c06024736384ae8542a67ed9fdf6534c325c8e Reviewed-By: Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'gdb/linux-nat.h')
-rw-r--r--gdb/linux-nat.h2
1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/gdb/linux-nat.h b/gdb/linux-nat.h
index 770fe92..1cdbeaf 100644
--- a/gdb/linux-nat.h
+++ b/gdb/linux-nat.h
@@ -129,6 +129,8 @@ public:
void follow_fork (inferior *, ptid_t, target_waitkind, bool, bool) override;
+ void follow_clone (ptid_t) override;
+
std::vector<static_tracepoint_marker>
static_tracepoint_markers_by_strid (const char *id) override;