New module loader makes kernel debugging much harder

Keith Owens (kaos@ocs.com.au)
Sat, 23 Nov 2002 13:20:10 +1100


The new module loader makes kernel debugging much harder.

There is no section information available, which means ...

* ksymoops cannot decode oops in modules. Without section data, there
is no way to reliably determine where module symbols were loaded.

* kgdb cannot debug modules. gdb needs to know which modules are
loaded and where each section of each module starts.

* kdb cannot display the section for a symbol. Which means the user
cannot do
objdump -j <section_name> --adjust-vma=<start_address> module
to map the code to the original object and source.

The complete lack of kernel and module symbols (no /proc/ksyms) means
that ksymoops is now useless on 2.5 kernels. If you get an oops in a
kernel built without kksymoops, there is no way to decode the oops.

Big step backwards, Rusty.

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