You're reading from Linux Kernel Debugging Leverage proven tools and advanced techniques to effectively debug Linux kernels and kernel modules

Product type Paperback

Published in Aug 2022

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781801075039

Length 638 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

Linux

Concepts

System Administration

Author (1):

Kaiwan N. Billimoria

View More author details

Table of Contents (17) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 1: A General Introduction and Approaches to Kernel Debugging

2. Chapter 1: A General Introduction to Debugging Software FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Approaches to Kernel Debugging

4. Part 2: Kernel and Driver Debugging Tools and Techniques

5. Chapter 3: Debug via Instrumentation – printk and Friends

6. Chapter 4: Debug via Instrumentation – Kprobes

7. Chapter 5: Debugging Kernel Memory Issues – Part 1

8. Chapter 6: Debugging Kernel Memory Issues – Part 2

9. Chapter 7: Oops! Interpreting the Kernel Bug Diagnostic

10. Chapter 8: Lock Debugging

11. Part 3: Additional Kernel Debugging Tools and Techniques

12. Chapter 9: Tracing the Kernel Flow

13. Chapter 10: Kernel Panic, Lockups, and Hangs

14. Chapter 11: Using Kernel GDB (KGDB)

15. Chapter 12: A Few More Kernel Debugging Approaches

16. Other Books You May Enjoy

Summary

Most dynamic memory allocation (and freeing) in the kernel is done via the kernel's powerful slab (internally, SLUB) interfaces. To debug them, the kernel provides a strong SLUB debug framework and several associated utilities (slabtop, slabratetop [-bpfcc], vmstat, and so on). Here, you learned how to catch SLUB bugs via the kernel's SLUB debug framework as well as how to leverage these utilities.

Among memory bugs, the very mention of the leakage defect raises dread and fear, even in very experienced developers! It's a deadly one indeed, as we (hopefully) showed you in the Can I see some real kernel memory leakage bugs? section! The kernel's powerful kmemleak framework can catch these dangerous leakage bugs. Be sure to test your product (for long durations) with it running!

As we covered these tools and frameworks, we tabulated the results, showing you the bugs a given tool can (or cannot) catch. To then summarize the whole thing, we built a larger...