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When GDB is debugging the AArch64 architecture, it provides the following special commands:
set debug aarch64
¶This command determines whether AArch64 architecture-specific debugging messages are to be displayed.
show debug aarch64
Show whether AArch64 debugging messages are displayed.
When GDB is debugging the AArch64 architecture, if the Scalable Vector
Extension (SVE) is present, then GDB will provide the vector registers
$z0
through $z31
, vector predicate registers $p0
through
$p15
, and the $ffr
register. In addition, the pseudo register
$vg
will be provided. This is the vector granule for the current thread
and represents the number of 64-bit chunks in an SVE z
register.
If the vector length changes, then the $vg
register will be updated,
but the lengths of the z
and p
registers will not change. This
is a known limitation of GDB and does not affect the execution of the
target process.
When GDB is debugging the AArch64 architecture, and the program is
using the v8.3-A feature Pointer Authentication (PAC), then whenever the link
register $lr
is pointing to an PAC function its value will be masked.
When GDB prints a backtrace, any addresses that required unmasking will be
postfixed with the marker [PAC]. When using the MI, this is printed as part
of the addr_flags
field.
When GDB is debugging the AArch64 architecture, the program is using the v8.5-A feature Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) and there is support in the kernel for MTE, GDB will make memory tagging functionality available for inspection and editing of logical and allocation tags. See Memory Tagging.
To aid debugging, GDB will output additional information when SIGSEGV signals are generated as a result of memory tag failures.
If the tag violation is synchronous, the following will be shown:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault Memory tag violation while accessing address 0x0500fffff7ff8000 Allocation tag 0x1 Logical tag 0x5.
If the tag violation is asynchronous, the fault address is not available. In this case GDB will show the following:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault Memory tag violation Fault address unavailable.
A special register, tag_ctl
, is made available through the
org.gnu.gdb.aarch64.mte
feature. This register exposes some
options that can be controlled at runtime and emulates the prctl
option PR_SET_TAGGED_ADDR_CTRL
. For further information, see the
documentation in the Linux kernel.
GDB supports dumping memory tag data to core files through the
gcore
command and reading memory tag data from core files generated
by the gcore
command or the Linux kernel.
When a process uses memory-mapped pages protected by memory tags (for example, AArch64 MTE), this additional information will be recorded in the core file in the event of a crash or if GDB generates a core file from the current process state.
The memory tag data will be used so developers can display the memory
tags from a particular memory region (using the ‘m’ modifier to the
x
command, using the print
command or using the various
memory-tag
subcommands.
In the case of a crash, GDB will attempt to retrieve the memory tag information automatically from the core file, and will show one of the above messages depending on whether the synchronous or asynchronous mode is selected. See Memory Tagging. See Examining Memory.
Next: x86 Architecture-specific Issues, Up: Architectures [Contents][Index]