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Date:      Wed, 6 Jun 2001 08:02:14 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
To:        "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>, Freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: -current kernel still considered dangerous
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0106060757230.16661-100000@beppo.feral.com>
In-Reply-To: <20010606074352.B96129@dragon.nuxi.com>

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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



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