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Re: new option --readnever & script gstack?


Eli Zaretskii wrote:
Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com
From: "Andrew Burgess" <aab@cichlid.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 13:42:54 -0800


It sounds like the -readnever option you propose would be useful only
in the pstack-like situation.  So how about adding a -pstack option
which will do whatever it takes for GDB to emulate pstack, i.e. avoid
reading the symbols, produce a backtrace, and then detach from the
process?

I think I would tend to use it 'with' symbols myself...


Then perhaps using the -readnow switch would do what you want.

I understand that the motivation for not reading the symbols is the
long time it takes GDB to do that, right?

Yes, the objective is to get in, get a minimal backtrace, and get out. Apparently this is a relatively common task in production environments - a few seconds down time is considered acceptable but not a few minutes (that's the magnitude difference I'm seeing :-/). I also don't see the option as being pstack specific - this technique is equally applicable to other scripts - gcore comes to mind - again only minimal symbol information being required.


So, ..., would a gstack.sh script and an option to disable symbolic debug information reading be useful additions to GDB?

Andrew


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