Issues debugging HotSpot with gdb 7.5

[Doug Simon]

On Apr 23, 2013, at 11:15 PM, Christian Thalinger <christian.thalinger at oracle.com> wrote:

> Hmm.  We had similar problems in the past related to stack alignment.  Is the stack pointer sane (16-bytes aligned)?

Pretty sure it is. This happens even when there are only C++ and interpreter frames (i.e., no compiled frames) on the stack.

-Doug

> 
> -- Chris
> 
> On Apr 23, 2013, at 1:32 PM, Doug Simon <doug.simon at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
>> At some point, gdb 7.5 on my LinuxMint (Release 14) box stopped being able to evaluate functions while debugging HotSpot. For example, calling the debug functions in debug.cpp would either hang or crash the VM. I now believe this is a bug (feature?) introduced with gdb 7.5. A workaround that has worked for me is to downgrade to gdb 7.4 by adding one of the "precise-updates" mirrors[1] to /etc/apt/sources.list and then:
>> 
>> $ sudo apt-get install gdb=7.4*
>> 
>> -Doug
>> 
>> [1] http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise-updates/amd64/gdb/download
>