Howto single step from beginning

[Paul Blacquiere]

> First, assuming that this is a dynamically linked application, try
> "set stop-on-solib-events 1".  That'll stop you way back in the dynamic
> linker.  From there you may be able to single-step to _start; it gets
> called from something like _dl_start_user.

pretty sure it is static
gcc -g --static -o test test.c

result as follows:
-------------------------------
(gdb) set stop-on-solib-events 1
(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/blacq/src/bin/test

Program received signal SIGILL, Illegal instruction.
0x00008094 in _start ()
(gdb)
------------------------------

>
> Secondly, does it work outside of GDB?

Yup, sorry forgot to mention earlier.

> If so, I'd suspect that the
> breakpoint GDB has invisibly placed at _start (which it always does)
> is causing SIGILL instead of SIGTRAP.  There was some change in this
> area for ARM/Linux recently.  If your kernel is too old, perhaps
> GDB is using a breakpoint that it doesn't support.  Or maybe it's GDB
> that's too old.  Check with "set debug target 1" before running to see
> what bytes it's inserting, then check your kernel sources (esp.
> arm/kernel/ptrace.c and arm/kernel/traps.c) to see which breakpoints
> it expects.
>

Your description seems very feasible, as I am using Linux kernel 2.6.12.

I will investigate this further.

PaulB.