Re: Postmortem debugging with arm-none-eabi-gdb from memory dump (not core)

[Yao Qi <qiyaoltc@gmail.com>]

On 17-10-05 05:55:38, Hesham M wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> As this is my first email to the list, and as an old user for gdb, I'd like
> first to thank the gdb community for their effort.
> 
> In a bare-metal ARM system, is there a way to use arm-none-eabi-gdb for
> postmortem debugging, the same way we do when we debug with core file on
> Linux, for example?
> 
> The issue is that I don't have a "core" file but I can generate memory dump
> of the whole memory (ROM is already known and through the hardware debugger
> used I can write the RAM contents to a file (outside the target of course).
> I can also collect the registers at the time of the crash. I can do the
> debugging/analysis if I connect gdb to the target at the time of the crash
> but I need to do this in later time away from the target. I hope to find a
> way to debug with memory dumps the same way gdb debugs with core files.
> 
> Of course if I can convert the memory dump to a valid core file, it might
> be another path to the solution. I don't know how to do that or if there is
> a tool that can help with this conversion.
> 
> Any idea if this is possible?

I prefer this approach, and it is possible.  GDB has a command "gcore",
https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Core-File-Generation.html#index-generate_002dcore_002dfile
you can take a loop how GDB does it.

> 
> A variant of this is idea is done for Keil tools:
> https://os.mbed.com/blog/entry/Post-mortem-debugging-with-ARM-mbed/
> 
> I have posted a similar question on stackoverflow but they closed it! So,
> please let me know if my question isn't clear.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Hesham

-- 
Yao (齐尧)