GDB function call failing due to memory protection of stack page in QEMU

["Abid, Hafiz" <hafiz_abid at mentor dot com>]

Hi All,
I have faced a problem using GDB with user-mode qemu. Although problem  
was observed for MIPS, I think it is a generic problem. I would  
appreciate an advice from experts on how best to deal with. Here is the  
problem description.

GDB has ability to call function from the program being debugged  
(http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Calling.html#Calling). For  
MIPS (and on other architectures), it put a breakpoint on the stack  
that is used as return address of the function. When that breakpoint is  
hit, GDB knows that function is complete and it can return control to  
user. This breakpoint on stack causes problem for QEMU. When it runs  
that instruction from stack, it add write-protection to that page. So  
after the function call, GDB is not able to write to stack. So any  
future function call or other operation that need to write to stack  
will fail. I show an example session below taken mostly from  
call-sc.exp of GDB testsuite.

There are 2 possible solution in my mind. One was to allow writing  
memory if this page originally had write access. This is a single line  
fix and a patch is below.

Second option was to not add write protection to the page in the first  
place if
i) Page currently has write access.
ii) First instruction is a breakpoint.

If 2nd looks a better option then I can prepare a patch for it. If  
there some other approach that will better solve this problem then  
please let me know.

Thanks,
Abid

GDB session:
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.4.50.20120716-cvs
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later  
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show  
copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "--host=i686-pc-linux-gnu  
--target=mips-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from /home/abidh/work/mips-demo/call_static...done.
(gdb) target remote :8000
Remote debugging using :8000
[New Remote target]
[Switching to Remote target]
__start () at ../ports/sysdeps/mips/start.S:84
84	../ports/sysdeps/mips/start.S: No such file or directory.
(gdb) break main
Breakpoint 1 at 0x4011e8: file call.c, line 63.
(gdb) c
Continuing.

Breakpoint 1, main () at call.c:63
63	  Fun(foo);	
(gdb) p /c fun()
$1 = 49 '1'
(gdb) p /c fun()
Cannot access memory at address 0x40800258
(gdb)

Signed-off-by: Hafiz Abid Qadeer <hafiz_abid@mentor.com>
---
 exec.c |    3 ++-
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/exec.c b/exec.c
index fa1e0c3..af5610b 100644
--- a/exec.c
+++ b/exec.c
@@ -1844,8 +1844,9 @@ int cpu_memory_rw_debug(CPUArchState *env,  
target_ulong addr,
         if (!(flags & PAGE_VALID))
             return -1;
         if (is_write) {
-            if (!(flags & PAGE_WRITE))
+            if ((!(flags & PAGE_WRITE)) && (!(flags &  
PAGE_WRITE_ORG))) {
                 return -1;
+            }
             /* XXX: this code should not depend on lock_user */
             if (!(p = lock_user(VERIFY_WRITE, addr, l, 0)))
                 return -1;
--
1.7.9.5