tree 722b8103ef17ff9ea3aba79fd640f1a6656d93ea
parent ad24bc3b505517ee7a3f1d83a28e20710035fe3f
author Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com> 1714660662 +0100
committer Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com> 1735049725 +0000

gdb: improve GDB's ability to auto-load the exec for a core file

GDB already has a limited mechanism for auto-loading the executable
corresponding to a core file, this can be found in the function
locate_exec_from_corefile_build_id in corelow.c.

However, this approach uses the build-id of the core file to look in
either the debug directory (for a symlink back to the executable) or
by asking debuginfod.  This is great, and works fine if the core file
is a "system" binary, but often, when I'm debugging a core file, it's
part of my development cycle, so there's no build-id symlink in the
debug directory, and debuginfod doesn't know about the binary either,
so GDB can't auto load the executable....

... but the executable is right there!

This commit builds on the earlier commits in this series to make GDB
smarter.

On GNU/Linux, when we parse the execution context from the core
file (see linux-tdep.c), we already grab the command pointed to by
AT_EXECFN.  If this is an absolute path then GDB can use this to
locate the executable, a build-id check ensures we've found the
correct file.  With this small change GDB suddenly becomes a lot
better at auto-loading the executable for a core file.

But we can do better!  Often the AT_EXECFN is not an absolute path.

If it is a relative path then we check for this path relative to the
core file.  This helps if a user does something like:

  $ ./build/bin/some_prog
  Aborted (core dumped)
  $ gdb -c corefile

In this case the core file in the current directory will have an
AT_EXECFN value of './build/bin/some_prog', so if we look for that
path relative to the location of the core file this might result in a
hit, again, a build-id check ensures we found the right file.

But we can do better still!  What if the user moves the core file?  Or
the user is using some tool to manage core files (e.g. the systemd
core file management tool), and the user downloads the core file to a
location from which the relative path no longer works?

Well in this case we can make use of the core file's mapped file
information (the NT_FILE note).  The executable will be included in
the mapped file list, and the path within the mapped file list will be
an absolute path.  We can search for mapped file information based on
an address within the mapped file, and the auxv vector happens to
include an AT_ENTRY value, which is the entry address in the main
executable.  If we look up the mapped file containing this address
we'll have the absolute path to the main executable, a build-id check
ensures this really is the file we're looking for.

It might be tempting to jump straight to the third approach, however,
there is one small downside to the third approach: if the executable
is a symlink then the AT_EXECFN string will be the name of the
symlink, that is, the thing the user asked to run.  The mapped file
entry will be the name of the actual file, i.e. the symlink target.
When we auto-load the executable based on the third approach, the file
loaded might have a different name to that which the user expects,
though the build-id check (almost) guarantees that we've loaded the
correct binary.

But there's one more thing we can check for!

If the user has placed the core file and the executable into a
directory together, for example, as might happen with a bug report,
then neither the absolute path check, nor the relative patch check
will find the executable.  So GDB will also look for a file with the
right name in the same directory as the core file.  Again, a build-id
check is performed to ensure we find the correct file.

Of course, it's still possible that GDB is unable to find the
executable using any of these approaches.  In this case, nothing
changes, GDB will check in the debug info directory for a build-id
based link back to the executable, and if that fails, GDB will ask
debuginfod for the executable.  If this all fails, then, as usual, the
user is able to load the correct executable with the 'file' command,
but hopefully, this should be needed far less from now on.