debugging hotspot with gdb 7.5

[Deneau, Tom]

I am trying to debug Hotspot on a newer linux system (Ubuntu 12.10) which has gdb 7.5.
Breakpoints and such work fine but I noticed that when I am at a breakpoint and 
I try to use one of the debug functions such as 
   p universe()

execution of the JVM takes off and runs until exit.  This didn't happen with the previous system
I used which had gdb 7.3.

Is there any workaround for this?

-- Tom Deneau