Re: How to debug a hang process if the hung process itself is gdb !

Jan Kratochvil
2010-10-05T18:00:20Z

On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:38:47 +0200, santoshp wrote:
> I have a signal handler for few fatal signals e.g.
> sigsegv, sigill etc. The handler will dump the stack trace in the log when
> those signals will be triggered using GDB in batch mode.

In various cases the process may be crashed a way no longer being able to
start that GDB. You should consider using /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern to
run GDB externally, if possible. It is the method used by ABRT (Automatic Bug
Reporting Tool) in recent Fedoras (+unconfirmed in RHEL-6).

> GDb version: GNU gdb Red Hat Linux (6.5-37.el5_2.2rh),

This is RHEL-5.2.z. While troubleshooting you should try a build of one of:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/download/
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/current/

Otherwise there is also more recent GDB in RHEL/CentOS-5.5: gdb-7.0.1-23.el5
Bugs of this kind for *.el5* GDBs should go rather to CentOS/RHEL Bugzilla
with a small reproducer, I would have to code the reproducer myself first.

Regards,
Jan