CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cdebuggingmemorygdbembedded
Šatov
Šatov

Reputation: 355

How to debug memory issues in embedded application

I'm new to embedded programming but I have to debug a quite complex application running on an embedded platform. I use GDB through a JTAG interface.

My program crashes at some point in an unexpected way. I suppose this happens due to some memory related issue. Does GDB allow me to inspect the memory after the system has crashed, thus being completely unresponsive?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 873

Answers (2)

dbrank0
dbrank0

Reputation: 9466

It depends on what has crashed. If the system is only unresponsive (in some infinite loop, deadlock or similar), then it will normally respond to GDB and you will be able to see a backtrace (call stack), etc. If the system/bus/cpu has actually crashed (on lower level), then it probably will not respond. In this case you can try setting breakpoints at suspicious places/variables and observe what is happening. Also simulator (ISS, RTL - if applicable) could come handy, to compare behavior with HW.

Upvotes: 3

Carl Norum
Carl Norum

Reputation: 224844

It depends on your setup a bit. In particular, since you're using JTAG, you may be able to set your debugger up to halt the processor when it detects an exception (for example accessing protected memory illegally and so forth). If not, you can replace your exception handlers with infinite loops. Then you can manually unroll the exception to see what the processor was doing that caused the crash. Normally, you'll still have access to memory in that situation and you can either use GDB to look around directly, or just dump everything to a file so you can look around later.

Upvotes: 7

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