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Re: [PATCH]: Make Linux use the new unified x86 watchpoint support
Mark Kettenis wrote:
>
> Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 08:55:00 +0200 (IST)
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>
>
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Michael Snyder wrote:
>
> > Guys, this implementation has problems. You have it hard-coded
> > so that on a linux host, it unconditionally calls native linux
> > methods involving ptrace to get the debug registers. This breaks
> > very badly if you're using a native linux host to debug a remote
> > i386 target.
>
> Just like the old implementation. I suspect the old implementation
> just happened to work because it didn't do any strict error checking.
No, you're on the wrong track. I haven't looked at how the old
implementation worked, but the problem with the new implementation
is _not_ the perror call. It's the ptrace call that preceeds it.
You can't call ptrace if the process you're debugging is remote.
> The fundamental problem is that the watpoint-stuff isn't part of the
> target vector.
Yes, you're absolutely right about this. This is why I don't
like ptrace calls being made from outside of the target vector.
> Sorry, I'm not following. The watchpoint-related macros are defined
> on files which should be used only with native debugging (i386-nat.c
> and nm-i386.h). On top of that, the macros only get exposed if the
> port defines I386_USE_GENERIC_WATCHPOINTS. A port which doesn't want
> that should get rid of the watchpoints for free, by simply not
> defining I386_USE_GENERIC_WATCHPOINTS.
>
> Which part of the above misfires, and why?
>
> It used to be possible to debug a remote i386 target with a native
> Linux/x86 debugger.
>
> > Seems to me, what you need to do is add these debug registers to the
> > reg cache, and treat them like ordinary registers.
>
> This possibility has been discussed back in November, but the
> conclusion was that it's not a good idea. I don't remember the
> details, but the reasons had something to do with threads and how
> the register cache is used in conjunction with threads. (I can dig
> out the URLs of the relevant messages, if you want to read them.)
>
> I suggested doing this, but several people objected to exposing the
> debug registers in this way. Threads have nothing to do with it
> (actually doing the correct thing for threads would make it easier if
> the debug registers would be part of the register cache).
Yes. But it's OK, 'cause breakpoints don't really work on a
per-thread basis either. The process will stop no matter which
thread hits the breakpoint, and then GDB will decide whether
the breakpoint was hit by the thread-of-interest. Can do the
same for watchpoints.
> > Then you can just use the ordinary read_register interface to get
> > them, and remote.c will do the right thing for you (assuming the
> > target knows about these extra registers).
>
> Mark explicitly didn't want the watchpoint code to be in the
> target-depenent files, so watchpoints cannot currently work for remote
> targets.
>
> Actually, our problems would only be bigger if the watchpoint code was
> part of the target-dependent files. But if we add the debug registers
> to the register cache and add the watchpoint stuff to the target
> vector, only a few changes are necessary to make the watchpoint code
> ready for a move to i386-tdep.c.
>
> Mark