- How to install gdb on oracle virtual box how to#
- How to install gdb on oracle virtual box install#
- How to install gdb on oracle virtual box serial#
- How to install gdb on oracle virtual box software#
- How to install gdb on oracle virtual box iso#
Kernel debugging (features for kernel debugging). Kernel hacking –> (options for kernel hacking). An important point to note is that compiling the kernel in the VM (guest OS) is extremely time-consuming.ĭuring kernel configuration (once you do a make menuconfig) ensure you enable the following options: Again, preparing a build environment is a task that is documented very well on the Internet. Wherever you compile it, you will obviously need the build environment set up. Since I have Ubuntu on the host and Fedora in the guest, I preferred to compile the kernel in the guest itself. The kernel source can be compiled either on the guest or the host. Preparing and installing the kernel on a guest OS There are many other ways of doing this, which you can explore on the Internet. If you are debugging kernel modules, you can edit the module source (in the NFS-shared folder) from the host, while you debug the guest. While debugging, you will need the kernel source files in the host OS, so that they are accessible to GDB - and let’s not forget the vmlinuz file, which is passed as one of the arguments to the debugger. How to install gdb on oracle virtual box install#
There are many benefits in such a setup - the shared kernel source can be used to directly do a make install of the kernel within the guest. View Figure 3 for an idea of my setup.įigure 3: The NFS share set-up with VirtualBox This share is mounted within the guest, and the kernel is compiled and installed from the guest command prompt. You could set up an optional NFS server on the host machine, and create an NFS share for the kernel source directory. I have set up networking for the VM and in my Fedora guest, so that I can easily access files on the host.
How to install gdb on oracle virtual box serial#
Enter a pipe file-name in the “Port/File Path” text field, as shown in Figure 2.įigure 2: Configuring the serial port in VirtualBox File-sharing between machines On the Port 1 tab, choose “Enable Serial Port”. Right-click your virtual machine instance, and go to the Settings tab. Setting up the guest Configuring the virtual serial port in VirtualBox How to get the source available in the VM is described under “File-sharing between machines” subsection below. It is used to recompile the guest OS kernel with KGDB-specific options. This can be picked up from I used version 2.6.37. The Linux kernel source is accessible to the VM (and the host, too - see below).
How to install gdb on oracle virtual box iso#
I downloaded the Fedora 14 ISO from the Fedora site, attached it to the VM, and booted the VM and installed Fedora.
How to install gdb on oracle virtual box how to#
Help on how to install an OS in a VirtualBox VM is also in the documentation. The VirtualBox documentation shows how to create a VM, if you need it, so I won’t repeat it here.
A VM installed with a Linux guest OS (I used Fedora 14). Refer to the socat man pages for more information. Normally, GDB takes a physical terminal file (like ttys0) as the remote target, but in our case, we will instead provide a pseudo terminal created by socat as the remote target for GDB. This is used to link the pipe file (FIFO) that is created by VirtualBox, with a pseudo-terminal on the host system. The socat binary installed on the host. I used the VirtualBox 4.0 distribution-specific binary obtained from the project website. How to install gdb on oracle virtual box software#
VirtualBox software installed on the host OS. My host system runs Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10, 64-bit. The host running a Linux system (you can have a host OS other than Linux, but this article does not cover that). Figure 1: KGDB with the VirtualBox set-up Prerequisites A virtual serial port is enabled between the host and the guest. When we combine VirtualBox with KGDB on a single machine, the host OS is the ‘source’ machine, while the guest OS (Linux kernel compiled with KGDB enabled) is the “destination”. With virtualisation, however, we can do away with that second machine. However, since version 2.6.26, KGDB has been merged into the mainline, and only needs to be enabled during kernel compilation.Ī typical KGDB setup requires two machines connected by a serial cable: one as a source machine on which debugging is done, and the other (destination) which is being debugged. Earlier, KGDB used to be a bunch of patches that had to be carefully merged into the mainline kernel. It can debug the kernel while it is running, set breakpoints, and step through the code. KGDB is an amazing Linux kernel debugging tool. Readers are expected to have prior knowledge on how to use GDB, know the fundamentals of the Linux kernel, understand custom compilation, apart from knowing how to use VirtualBox or any other virtualisation software. This article shows how to use virtualisation atop a running OS to help debug a live kernel on a single machine. Debugging an application live has always been easy for application developers, but debugging a live kernel has never been a simple option for kernel developers - it involves multiple machines with serial connections.
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