ipkdbg
: Generate gdb environments from opkg package archivesipkdbg
automates the process of generating gdb
environments for interactive debugging and coredump analysis of split-debug binaries by exploiting bitbake's runtime package management support outside the context of the BMC.
ipkdbg
Assuming the presence of the appropriate integration, using ipkdbg
requires minimal fuss.
SYNOPSIS ipkdbg [-q] RELEASE FILE CORE [PACKAGE...]
It handles the following use-cases:
After extracting a core file from the BMC an interactive gdb
session can be set up against it with:
$ ipkdbg 2.11.0 - my-application.core ... (gdb)
Where:
ipkdbg
is the script2.11.0
is the OpenBMC version tag that locates the appropriate opkg.conf
-
is the FILE parameter. -
specifies it must be extracted from the coremy-application.core
is a core dump generated by /usr/bin/my-application
Note that for convenience ipkdbg
automatically runs bt
in the gdb
session once the core has been loaded to provide a backtrace.
Note that we don't need to specify any packages to install into the rootfs if the image package database is available. ipkdbg
will perform a reverse-lookup to map the absolute binary path extracted from the core to the package that installed it. From there opkg
will resolve all the dependencies. Additionally, ipkdbg
will identify the associated debug symbol and source packages and install them as well.
If an image package database is not available then ipkdbg
will require that the necessary packages are listed on the command-line.
For use in scripting environments to automate backtrace extraction ipkdbg
has the -q
option to quit gdb
immediately after the backtrace is printed. The invocation looks like:
$ ipkdbg -q 2.11.0 - my-application.core
Interactive debugging is handled by attaching gdbserver
on the BMC to the running instance of /usr/bin/my-application
on the BMC. ipkdbg
is then used to generate the gdb
environment:
$ ipkdbg 2.11.0 /usr/bin/my-application - ... (gdb)
Where:
ipkdbg
is the script2.11.0
is the OpenBMC version tag that locates the appropriate opkg.conf
/usr/bin/my-application
is the absolute path of the application to debug-
is the CORE parameter. -
specifies that there is no core fileNote that we don't need to specify any packages to install into the rootfs if the image package database is available. ipkdbg
will perform a reverse-lookup to map the absolute binary path provided on the command-line to the package that installed it. From there opkg
will resolve all the dependencies. Additionally, ipkdbg
will identify the associated debug symbol and source packages and install them as well.
If an image package database is not available then ipkdbg
will require that the necessary packages are listed on the command-line.
Once the (gdb)
prompt is reached the usual remote debugging command applies:
(gdb) target remote $BMC:1234
To save exiting the gdb
session and re-invoking ipkdbg
to add a package to the rootfs environment, ipkdbg
installs an opkg
helper into the PATH of the gdb
process. With this, you can drop to a shell from gdb
via the sh
command, and then run opkg install ...
to install the necessary packages. Exit the shell subprocess to return to your gdb
prompt with the new package included in the gdb
environment.
ipkdbg
is intended to operate with minimal assumptions about its environment. The assumptions it does make are:
coreutils
awk
tar
gzip
wget
gdb
is installedHowever, ipkdbg
also relies on opkg
to get its job done. As opkg
is itself a package manager, it tends not to be available as a package via distro package managers. A conflicting requirement is that we want ipkdbg
to be able to run almost anywhere without fuss. To resolve these issues ipkdbg
packages opkg
binaries inside itself as a self-extracting shell-script. What you see in this directory is the input script (ipkdbg.in
) and build infrastructure (Makefile
) for generating an ipkdbg
executable that packages one or more opkg
binaries.
ipkdbg
supports multiple distros and architectures by defining a directory scheme to contain opkg
binaries. This hierarchy is archived and compressed using tar
and gzip
, and the archive embedded in the ipkdbg
shell script by the Makefile
. The opkg
path for a given architecture, distro and release combination is defined by the following directory hierarchy in terms of os-release(5)
:
$(uname -m)/${ID}/${VERSION_ID}/opkg
This hierarchy must be placed under a bin/
directory alongside the Makefile
.
To avoid licensing and distribution legal issues openbmc-tools does not provide pre-built opkg
binaries. You must build your own and integrate them into the hierarchy under bin/
outlined above. To this end, the build-opkg
script is provided. It probably won't work without tinkering for your target distro, but it might get you 90% of the way there.
Once you have built the required opkg
binaries and integrated them into the hierarchy under bin/
alongside the Makefile
, run make
to generate the final ipkdbg
script. The output script can then be freely copied between machines supported by the embedded opkg
binaries. The build system will handle stripping the opkg
binaries to ensure their size is reduced as much as practical prior to archiving and compression. It is worth committing the binaries under bin/
to ensure that the build for your output ipkdbg
script is reproducible.
For ipkdbg
to do its job via opkg
it must be possible for it to acquire an opkg.conf
that describes the location of the package archive for your target environment. The IPKDBG_CONF_*
variables help describe a wget
-compatible URL where this configuration lives. ipkdbg
will bootstrap by fetching this opkg.conf
and then passing it as a parameter to all invocations of opkg
, where these invocations of opkg
populate a rootfs used as your gdb
debugging environment.
A consequence of this is you must also host ipk
package archives whose URLs can be described in the acquired opkg.conf
. You will need one complete package archive per BMC target environment (tag or release).
The packages can be extracted from the bitbake build tree by archiving tmp/deploy/ipk
once bitbake obmc-phosphor-image && bitbake package-index
has exited successfully.
Finally, ipkdbg
works best when it has access to the image's installed package database. This can be captured from the build tree when the build is configured with INC_IPK_IMAGE_GEN = "1"
by archiving the directory hierarchy under ./tmp/work/*/obmc-phosphor-image/1.0-r0/temp/saved
with the following incantation:
$ tar -cJf opkg-database.tar.xz \ -C ./tmp/work/*/obmc-phosphor-image/1.0-r0/temp/saved/target/ \ info lists status
ipkdbg
assumes that the appropriate opkg-database.tar.xz
can be fetched using wget
and that its URL can be generated in the same manner as that for opkg.conf
.