From owner-freebsd-alpha Wed Jun 6 8: 2:18 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from beppo.feral.com (beppo.feral.com [192.67.166.79]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 82E6737B405; Wed, 6 Jun 2001 08:02:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mjacob@feral.com) Received: from beppo (mjacob@beppo [192.67.166.79]) by beppo.feral.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id f56F2Eg16676; Wed, 6 Jun 2001 08:02:14 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mjacob@feral.com) Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 08:02:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Jacob Reply-To: mjacob@feral.com To: "David O'Brien" Cc: Andrew Gallatin , Freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: -current kernel still considered dangerous In-Reply-To: <20010606074352.B96129@dragon.nuxi.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, David O'Brien wrote: > On Wed, Jun 06, 2001 at 07:36:48AM -0700, Matthew Jacob wrote: > > Unlike Solaris, modules are not essential to run FreeBSD. I think debugging > > this by fixing 'debugging modules' is at best a 3rd order priority. > > I thought many of the device driver folks perfer to develop via modules. > How do they debug things? Printf() is it? I have to admit that I've almost never used a source level debugger for kernel debugging- except for WindowsNT. I'll also freely admit that there are others who are much happier and better at using the tools for FreeBSD for this- I'm not as I *usually* find myself in the case where the gdb style debugger isn't helping. Printf && states, yes. Modules are good. I desparately miss Solaris' kadb in *BSD. KADB is a machine level debugger- but has things like deferred breakpoints (for modules- you can set a breakpoint for a symbol in a module before the module is loaded). More importantly, there is an extremely tight coupling between the kernel && kadb, and, more importantly, kadb and boot or prom services, so that breakpoints && printfs don't depend on sane kernel driver state. -matt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message