Created attachment 13424 [details] Test case for demonstrating OBJF_MAINLINE assertion when using attach-symbol-file Using the provided test case, do: gcc -o add-symbol-file-attach -g add-symbol-file-attach.c ./add-symbol-file-attach & pgrep -f add-symbol-file-attach (A process ID will be printed here - remember it for use with attach command, below) gdb -q add-symbol-file add-symbol-file-attach y attach <pid-of-add-symbol-file-attach-process> y print foo At this point, GDB will show the assertion failure: symtab.c:6417: internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*, const minimal_symbol*): Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0' failed. Once you've exited from GDB, kill the test program with: pkill -f add-symbol-file-attach Here's a session showing the problem: [kev@f33-1 tmp]$ gcc -o add-symbol-file-attach -g add-symbol-file-attach.c [kev@f33-1 tmp]$ ./add-symbol-file-attach & [1] 4103218 [kev@f33-1 tmp]$ pgrep -f add-symbol-file-attach 4103218 [kev@f33-1 tmp]$ /ironwood1/sourceware-git/f33-master/inst/bin/gdb -q (gdb) add-symbol-file add-symbol-file-attach add symbol table from file "add-symbol-file-attach" (y or n) y Reading symbols from add-symbol-file-attach... (gdb) attach 4103218 Attaching to process 4103218 Load new symbol table from "/tmp/add-symbol-file-attach"? (y or n) y Reading symbols from /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach... Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6) Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2) 0x00007f502130bf27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6 (gdb) p foo /ironwood1/sourceware-git/f33-master/bld/../../worktree-master/gdb/symtab.c:6417: internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*, const minimal_symbol*): Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0' failed. A problem internal to GDB has been detected, further debugging may prove unreliable. Quit this debugging session? (y or n) y This is a bug, please report it. For instructions, see: <https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>. /ironwood1/sourceware-git/f33-master/bld/../../worktree-master/gdb/symtab.c:6417: internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*, const minimal_symbol*): Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0' failed. A problem internal to GDB has been detected, further debugging may prove unreliable. Create a core file of GDB? (y or n) n [kev@f33-1 tmp]$ pkill -f add-symbol-file-attach I have a fix for this bug...
This can be triggered using file and the corresponding gdb/mi -file-exec-and-symbols as well. For some reason neither your proposed patch is applied nor anything else has fixed this (tested with trunk 14.0.50.20230621-git).
What's the status of this patch?
(In reply to Tom Tromey from comment #2) > What's the status of this patch? It needed a rebase. I've done that and am in the process of testing it. If all goes well, I'll post it (again) to the list for review.
The master branch has been updated by Kevin Buettner <kevinb@sourceware.org>: https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=62669649dc0f03b5d12983e8f15193c7182dbfbc commit 62669649dc0f03b5d12983e8f15193c7182dbfbc Author: Kevin Buettner <kevinb@redhat.com> Date: Thu Aug 31 07:43:20 2023 -0700 [symtab/27831] Fix OBJF_MAINLINE assert This commit fixes a bug mentioned by Florian Weimer during the libpthread/ld.so load order discussion from 2021. Florian provided instructions for reproducing the bug here: https://sourceware.org/pipermail/gdb-patches/2021-April/177923.html That particular test does some interesting things involving forks, threads, and thread local storage. Fortunately, none of that is needed to reproduce the problem. I've made a new test case (which is now found in a separate commit) contained in the files gdb.base/add-symbol-file-attach.{c,exp}. The .c file is fairly simple as is the recipe for reproducing the problem. After separately starting the test case and noting the process id, start gdb (w/ no arguments), and do the following to reproduce the assertion failure - for this run, the process id of the separately started add-symbol-file-attach process is 4103218: (gdb) add-symbol-file add-symbol-file-attach add symbol table from file "add-symbol-file-attach" (y or n) y Reading symbols from add-symbol-file-attach... (gdb) attach 4103218 Attaching to process 4103218 Load new symbol table from "/tmp/add-symbol-file-attach"? (y or n) y Reading symbols from /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach... Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6) Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2) 0x00007f502130bf27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6 (gdb) p foo symtab.c:6417: internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*, const minimal_symbol*): Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0' failed. A problem internal to GDB has been detected, further debugging may prove unreliable. The add-symbol-file command causes the symbols to be loaded without the SYMFILE_MAINLINE (and hence the OBJFILE_MAINLINE) flags being set. This, in turn, causes the "maybe_copied" flag to be set for the global symbol (named "foo" in the provided test case). The attach command will cause another objfile to be created, but it will reuse the symtabs from the objfile created by add-symbol-file, leading to a situation in which the OBJFILE_MAINLINE flag will be set for the new (attach-created) objfile, however the "maybe_copied" flag will still be set for the global symbol. Had it been loaded anew, this flag would not be set due to OBJFILE_MAINLINE being set for the objfile. At present, minimal_symbol::value_address looks like this: CORE_ADDR minimal_symbol::value_address (objfile *objfile) const { if (this->maybe_copied (objfile)) return get_msymbol_address (objfile, this); else return (CORE_ADDR (this->unrelocated_address ()) + objfile->section_offsets[this->section_index ()]); } So, we can now see the problem: When the "maybe_copied" flag is set, get_msymbol_address() will be called. However, get_msymbol_address() assumes that it won't be called with the OBF_MAINLINE flag set for the objfile in question. It, in fact, contains an assert() which makes sure that this is the case: gdb_assert ((objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0); (If this assert is removed, then get_msymbol_address() recurses infinitely for the case under consideration.) So, the problem here is that the maybe_copied flag is set for the symbol AND the OBJF_MAINLINE flag is set for the objfile. As noted earlier, this happens due to add-symbol-file being used; this causes the maybe_copied flag to be set. Later, when the attach is performed, OBJF_MAINLINE will be set for that objfile, leading to this unfortunate situation. My first cut at a solution involved adjusting the MSYMBOL_VALUE_ADDRESS macro (which has since been changed to be the method noted above) to include a test of the OBJFILE_MAINLINE flag. However, Simon Marchi, in his review of my patch, suggested a better solution. Simon observed that the 'maybe_copied' flag is (was, after this commit) being set/initialized in record_minimal_symbol() using using the objfile in the context in which the symbol was created. Simon further observed: Today, a single copy is created, as symtabs are shared between objfiles. This means that everything that we store into a symbol must be independent of any objfile. However, the value of the maybe_copied field is dependent on the objfile in the context of which the symbol was created. Meaning that when the symbol is re-used in the context of another objfile, the maybe_copied value is not right in the context of that objfile. So I think it means there isn't a single "is this symbol maybe copied" value, but instead "is this symbol maybe copied, in the context of this given objfile". And the answer is yes or no, depending on whether the objfile is mainline. So maybe_copied should become a method that takes an objfile and returns an answer based on that. Simon's full review can be found here: https://sourceware.org/pipermail/gdb-patches/2021-May/178855.html Simon also provided a patch which implements this suggestion. The current patch is mostly his work, though I did make some adjustments during a rebase in addition to making some changes to account for a concern from Tom Tromey. During his review of the v3 series, Tom noted, "The old approach was specific to ELF, while the new approach will be used by any object format." Tom further observed, "...it seems like it could result in an incorrect evaluation in some scenario." This seemed plausible to me, so I introduced the flag 'object_format_has_copy_relocs' to struct objfile. It is set at the end of elf_symfile_read() in elfread.c. The minimal_symbol::maybe_copied method tests this new flag, forcing this method to return false when the flag is not set. If we find that other object file formats use the same copy reloc mechanism as ELF, then 'object_format_has_copy_relocs' should be set for objfiles using those formats. Lastly, I'll note that this is a strange use case. It's far more common to either let gdb figure out which file to load by itself when attaching, i.e. (gdb) attach 4104360 Attaching to process 4104360 Reading symbols from /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach... Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6) Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2) 0x00007fdb1fc33f27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6 (gdb) p foo $1 = 42 ...or to use the "file" command prior to the attach, like this: (gdb) file add-symbol-file-attach Reading symbols from add-symbol-file-attach... (gdb) attach 4104360 Attaching to program: /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach, process 4104360 Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6) Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2... (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2) 0x00007fdb1fc33f27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6 Both of these more common scenarios work perfectly fine; using "add-symbol-file" to load the program to which you will attach isn't recommended as a normal use case. That said, it's bad for gdb to assert, hence this fix. Reviewed-by: Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca> Co-Authored-by: Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca> Approved-by: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com> Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831
The master branch has been updated by Kevin Buettner <kevinb@sourceware.org>: https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=79771b88bf22d7b4499363ba8a2dbd6a534deb98 commit 79771b88bf22d7b4499363ba8a2dbd6a534deb98 Author: Kevin Buettner <kevinb@redhat.com> Date: Thu Aug 31 07:44:13 2023 -0700 [symtab/27831] New test case: gdb.base/add-symbol-file-attach.exp This commit adds a new test case for bug 27831. See the contents of the .exp file for a description of what it's about. Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831 Approved-By: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>
Closing this bug since it should be fixed now.