GDB Linux snippets

Python datastructure helper

It is also possible to evaluate data structures in the gdb commandline using small python code blocks. To get for example the name of all devices which batman-adv knows about and the name of the batman-adv interface they belong to, just enter following in the initialized, interrupted gdb session:

python
import linux.lists
from linux.utils import CachedType

struct_batadv_hard_iface = CachedType('struct batadv_hard_iface').get_type().pointer()

for node in linux.lists.list_for_each_entry(gdb.parse_and_eval("batadv_hardif_list"), struct_batadv_hard_iface, 'list'):
    hardif = node['net_dev']['name'].string()
    softif = node['soft_iface']['name'].string() if node['soft_iface'] else "none"
    gdb.write("hardif {} belongs to {}\n".format(hardif, softif))
end

Working with external Watchdog over GPIO

There are various boards which use external watchdog chips via GPIO. They have to be triggered regularly (every minute or even more often) or otherwise the board will just suddenly reboot. This will of course not work when Linux is no longer in control and kgdb/gdb is the only way to interact with the system.

But luckily, we can just write manually to the registers (every n seconds). For example on ar71xx, we have two possible ways:

• write to the clear/set registers

  • set bit n in register GPIO_SET (0x1804000C) to set output value to 1 for GPIO n

  • set bit n in register GPIO_CLEAR (0x18040010) to set output value to 0 for GPIO n

• overwrite the complete GPIO_OUT (0x18040008) register (which might modify more GPIO bits then required)

We will only demonstrate this here for GPIO 12 with GPIO_SET/GPIO_CLEAR.

# check where iomem 018040000-180400ff is mapped to
(gdb) print ath79_gpio_base
$1 = (void *) 0xb8040000

# set GPIO 12 to low
(gdb) set {uint32_t}0xb8040010 = 0x00001000

# set GPIO 12 to high
(gdb) set {uint32_t}0xb804000C = 0x00001000