Re: dump memory to file

[Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com>]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2001 at 10:52:24AM -0700, Kevin Buettner wrote:

> > A while back I had asked if gdb could dump a section of target
> > memory to disk (as bin, elf, hex, whatever).  The answer at the
> > time was no -- is that still the case?  If I added such a
> > command, would it be of interest to anybody else? (IOW, should
> > I submit a patch?)
> 
> I think it'd be nice to provide a more general solution.  I.e, I think
> it'd be nice if GDB had a facility whereby output from subsequent
> commands would be redirected to a file.  Maybe something along the
> following lines?
> 
> (gdb) redirect-output /tmp/foo
> (gdb) x/10000x 0x01000
> (gdb) print/x $pc
> (gdb) x/100i $pc-200
> (gdb) redirect-output STDOUT
> 
> And, it'd also be nice to redirect to be able to redirect to two or
> more destinations at the same time...
> 
> (gdb) redirect-output /tmp/foo STDOUT

That would be really nice, particularly for printing large
structures (or arrays of structures) for archival or automated
analysis. But, I think the binary dump/restore function still
needs to be there:

 1) I'd like to be able to dump data in a format understood by
    objcopy.  That way, you can convert it to specific formats
    needed by other tools (e.g. RPOM programmer), link it into
    another program, etc.

 2) Redirecting output doesn't provide a way to load a chunk
    from disk back to target memory.  I don't need to do this
    nearly as often, but it would occasionally be handy.

-- 
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com