Issued:

2011-12-06

Updated:

2011-12-06

RHBA-2011:1699 - gdb bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

gdb bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

Updated gdb packages that fix multiple bugs and add three enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The GNU Debugger (GDB) allows users to debug programs written in C, C++, and other languages by executing them in a controlled fashion and then printing out their data.

This update provides fixes for the following bugs:

• Prior to this update, GDB could stop on error when trying to access the libpthread shared library before the library was relocated. Fixed GDB lets the relocations to be resolved first, making such program debuggable. (BZ#669432)

• The Intel Fortran Compiler records certain debug info symbols in uppercase but the gfortran compiler writes case-insensitive symbols in lowercase. As a result, GDB could terminate unexpectedly when accessing uppercase characters in the debug information from the Intel Fortran Compiler. With this update, GDB properly implements case insensitivity and ignores the symbols case in the symbol files. (BZ#669434)

• When the user selected the "-statistics" option with a negative number as a result, GDB printed the minus sign twice. This has been fixed and GDB now displays negative numbers with one minus sign only. (BZ#692386)

• On the PowerPC and the IBM System z architectures, GDB displayed only LWP (light-weight process) identifiers which matched the Linux TID (Thread Identifier) values for the threads found in the core file. GDB has been fixed to initialize the libthread_db threads debugging library when accessing the core file. GDB now correctly displays the pthread_t identifier in addition to the LWP identifier on the aforementioned architectures. (BZ#697900)

• Structure field offsets above 65535 described by the DWARF DW_AT_data_member_location attribute were improperly interpreted as a 0 value. GDB has been modified and can now handle also large structures and their fields. (BZ#702427)

• The difference between the very closely related "ptype" and "whatis" commands was not clearly defined in the gdb info manual. Detailed differences between these commands have been described in the manual. (BZ#704010)

• Prior to this update, the "info sources" subcommand printed only relative paths to the source files. GDB has been modified to correctly display the full path name to the source file. (BZ#712117)

• Modifying a string in the executable using the "-write" command line option could fail with an error if the executable was not running. With this update, GDB can modify executables even before they are started. (BZ#730475)

This update also adds the following enhancements:

• With this update, Float16 instructions on future Intel processors are now supported. (BZ#696890)

• Debugged programs can open many shared libraries on demand at runtime using the dlopen() function. Prior to this update, tracking shared libraries that were in use by the debugged program could lead to overhead. The debugging performance of GDB has been improved: the overhead is now lower if applications load many objects. (BZ#698001)

• Prior to this update, GDB did not handle DWARF 4 .debug_types data correctly. Now, GDB can correctly process data in the DWARF 4 format. (BZ#718141)

All GDB users are advised to upgrade to these updated gdb packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• gdb-7.2-50.el6.i686.rpm
• gdb-gdbserver-7.2-50.el6.ppc64.rpm
• gdb-gdbserver-7.2-50.el6.x86_64.rpm
• gdb-7.2-50.el6.x86_64.rpm
• gdb-7.2-50.el6.src.rpm
• gdb-debuginfo-7.2-50.el6.ppc64.rpm
• gdb-7.2-50.el6.ppc64.rpm
• gdb-7.2-50.el6.s390x.rpm
• gdb-gdbserver-7.2-50.el6.s390x.rpm
• gdb-gdbserver-7.2-50.el6.i686.rpm
• gdb-debuginfo-7.2-50.el6.i686.rpm
• gdb-debuginfo-7.2-50.el6.s390x.rpm
• gdb-debuginfo-7.2-50.el6.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 669434
• This content is not included.BZ - 692386
• This content is not included.BZ - 697900
• This content is not included.BZ - 702427
• This content is not included.BZ - 704010

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.