14.18 Invoking GDB Before a Program Aborts
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You can examine the state of the process, make changes to the state and continue program execution, force a core dump, or terminate execution. It enables you to control program execution under the debugger if the program is about to abort. You can load a new process or attach to a running process for monitoring.
To monitor a new process, enter the following command:
gdb
To monitor a running process, attach to the process using the following command:
gdb
14.19 Aborting a Command Line Call
When a command line call is issued and it is interrupted by a breakpoint or a signal before completing the program execution, the abort command enables the user to abort the command line call without allowing the signal to modify the state of the debugged process.
When a signal interrupts program execution, it can modify the process state of the debugged program and result in an abrupt termination of the program (due to addressing errors from a call that is not a part of the source program). In such cases, the abort command is particularly useful in exiting the command line call without modifying the process state of the debugged program.
The following example illustrates the use of the abort command:
(gdb) break main
Breakpoint 1 at 0x2c74: file .../address_error.c, line 41. (gdb) run
Starting program: ./address_error
Breakpoint 1, main () at ./address_error.c:41 41 fun (count, count*1.1);
(gdb) p fun(10, 1.1)
Program received signal SIGBUS, Bus error si_code: 0 - BUS_UNKNOWN - Unknown Error.
0x2c38 in fun (i=10, f=0) at ./address_error.c:37 37 count = *p;
The program being debugged was signaled while in a function called from GDB. GDB remains in the frame where the signal was received.
To change this behavior use "set unwindonsignal on"
Evaluation of the expression containing the function (fun) will be abandoned. (gdb) bt
#0 0x2c38 in fun (i=10, f=0) at ../address_error.c:37 #1 0x1920 in _sr4export+0x8 ()
#2 <function called from gdb>
#3 0x2c74 in main () at ./address_error.c:40 (gdb) abort
14.18 Invoking GDB Before a Program Aborts 207