[Bug symtab/27831] New: add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[Bug symtab/27831] New: add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[kevinb at redhat dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

            Bug ID: 27831
           Summary: add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related
                    assertion failure
           Product: gdb
           Version: HEAD
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: symtab
          Assignee: unassigned at sourceware dot org
          Reporter: kevinb at redhat dot com
  Target Milestone: ---

Created attachment 13424
  --> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=13424&action=edit
Test case for demonstrating OBJF_MAINLINE assertion when using
attach-symbol-file

Using the provided test case, do:

gcc -o add-symbol-file-attach -g add-symbol-file-attach.c
./add-symbol-file-attach &
pgrep -f add-symbol-file-attach
(A process ID will be printed here - remember it for use with attach command,
below)

gdb -q
add-symbol-file add-symbol-file-attach
y
attach <pid-of-add-symbol-file-attach-process>
y
print foo

At this point, GDB will show the assertion failure:

symtab.c:6417: internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*, const
minimal_symbol*): Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0' failed.

Once you've exited from GDB, kill the test program with:

pkill -f add-symbol-file-attach

Here's a session showing the problem:

[kev@f33-1 tmp]$ gcc -o add-symbol-file-attach -g add-symbol-file-attach.c
[kev@f33-1 tmp]$ ./add-symbol-file-attach &
[1] 4103218
[kev@f33-1 tmp]$ pgrep -f add-symbol-file-attach
4103218
[kev@f33-1 tmp]$ /ironwood1/sourceware-git/f33-master/inst/bin/gdb -q
(gdb) add-symbol-file add-symbol-file-attach
add symbol table from file "add-symbol-file-attach"
(y or n) y
Reading symbols from add-symbol-file-attach...
(gdb) attach 4103218
Attaching to process 4103218
Load new symbol table from "/tmp/add-symbol-file-attach"? (y or n) y
Reading symbols from /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach...
Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6...
(No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6)
Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2...
(No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2)
0x00007f502130bf27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6
(gdb) p foo
/ironwood1/sourceware-git/f33-master/bld/../../worktree-master/gdb/symtab.c:6417:
internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*, const minimal_symbol*):
Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0' failed.
A problem internal to GDB has been detected,
further debugging may prove unreliable.
Quit this debugging session? (y or n) y

This is a bug, please report it.  For instructions, see:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.

/ironwood1/sourceware-git/f33-master/bld/../../worktree-master/gdb/symtab.c:6417:
internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*, const minimal_symbol*):
Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0' failed.
A problem internal to GDB has been detected,
further debugging may prove unreliable.
Create a core file of GDB? (y or n) n
[kev@f33-1 tmp]$ pkill -f add-symbol-file-attach

I have a fix for this bug...

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug symtab/27831] add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[pexu at sourceware dot mail.kapsi.fi]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

Pekka Seppänen <pexu at sourceware dot mail.kapsi.fi> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |pexu at sourceware dot mail.kapsi.
                   |                            |fi

--- Comment #1 from Pekka Seppänen <pexu at sourceware dot mail.kapsi.fi> ---
This can be triggered using file and the corresponding gdb/mi
-file-exec-and-symbols as well.  For some reason neither your proposed patch is
applied nor anything else has fixed this (tested with trunk
14.0.50.20230621-git).

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug symtab/27831] add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[tromey at sourceware dot org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |tromey at sourceware dot org

--- Comment #2 from Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> ---
What's the status of this patch?

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug symtab/27831] add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[kevinb at redhat dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

--- Comment #3 from Kevin Buettner <kevinb at redhat dot com> ---
(In reply to Tom Tromey from comment #2)
> What's the status of this patch?

It needed a rebase.  I've done that and am in the process of testing it.  If
all goes well, I'll post it (again) to the list for review.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug symtab/27831] add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

--- Comment #4 from cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org <cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org> ---
The master branch has been updated by Kevin Buettner <kevinb@sourceware.org>:

https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=62669649dc0f03b5d12983e8f15193c7182dbfbc

commit 62669649dc0f03b5d12983e8f15193c7182dbfbc
Author: Kevin Buettner <kevinb@redhat.com>
Date:   Thu Aug 31 07:43:20 2023 -0700

    [symtab/27831] Fix OBJF_MAINLINE assert

    This commit fixes a bug mentioned by Florian Weimer during the
    libpthread/ld.so load order discussion from 2021.  Florian provided
    instructions for reproducing the bug here:

    https://sourceware.org/pipermail/gdb-patches/2021-April/177923.html

    That particular test does some interesting things involving forks,
    threads, and thread local storage.  Fortunately, none of that is
    needed to reproduce the problem.

    I've made a new test case (which is now found in a separate commit)
    contained in the files gdb.base/add-symbol-file-attach.{c,exp}.  The
    .c file is fairly simple as is the recipe for reproducing the problem.

    After separately starting the test case and noting the process id,
    start gdb (w/ no arguments), and do the following to reproduce the
    assertion failure - for this run, the process id of the separately
    started add-symbol-file-attach process is 4103218:

    (gdb) add-symbol-file add-symbol-file-attach
    add symbol table from file "add-symbol-file-attach"
    (y or n) y
    Reading symbols from add-symbol-file-attach...
    (gdb) attach 4103218
    Attaching to process 4103218
    Load new symbol table from "/tmp/add-symbol-file-attach"? (y or n) y
    Reading symbols from /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach...
    Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6...
    (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6)
    Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2...
    (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2)
    0x00007f502130bf27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6
    (gdb) p foo
    symtab.c:6417: internal-error: CORE_ADDR get_msymbol_address(objfile*,
      const minimal_symbol*): Assertion `(objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0'
      failed.
    A problem internal to GDB has been detected,
    further debugging may prove unreliable.

    The add-symbol-file command causes the symbols to be loaded without
    the SYMFILE_MAINLINE (and hence the OBJFILE_MAINLINE) flags being
    set.  This, in turn, causes the "maybe_copied" flag to be set for
    the global symbol (named "foo" in the provided test case).

    The attach command will cause another objfile to be created, but
    it will reuse the symtabs from the objfile created by add-symbol-file,
    leading to a situation in which the OBJFILE_MAINLINE flag will be set
    for the new (attach-created) objfile, however the "maybe_copied"
    flag will still be set for the global symbol.  Had it been loaded
    anew, this flag would not be set due to OBJFILE_MAINLINE being set
    for the objfile.

    At present, minimal_symbol::value_address looks like this:

    CORE_ADDR
    minimal_symbol::value_address (objfile *objfile) const
    {
      if (this->maybe_copied (objfile))
        return get_msymbol_address (objfile, this);
      else
        return (CORE_ADDR (this->unrelocated_address ())
                + objfile->section_offsets[this->section_index ()]);
    }

    So, we can now see the problem: When the "maybe_copied" flag is set,
    get_msymbol_address() will be called.  However, get_msymbol_address()
    assumes that it won't be called with the OBF_MAINLINE flag set for
    the objfile in question.  It, in fact, contains an assert() which
    makes sure that this is the case:

      gdb_assert ((objf->flags & OBJF_MAINLINE) == 0);

    (If this assert is removed, then get_msymbol_address() recurses
    infinitely for the case under consideration.)

    So, the problem here is that the maybe_copied flag is set for the
    symbol AND the OBJF_MAINLINE flag is set for the objfile.  As noted
    earlier, this happens due to add-symbol-file being used; this causes
    the maybe_copied flag to be set.  Later, when the attach is performed,
    OBJF_MAINLINE will be set for that objfile, leading to this
    unfortunate situation.

    My first cut at a solution involved adjusting the
    MSYMBOL_VALUE_ADDRESS macro (which has since been changed to be the
    method noted above) to include a test of the OBJFILE_MAINLINE flag.
    However, Simon Marchi, in his review of my patch, suggested a better
    solution.  Simon observed that the 'maybe_copied' flag is (was, after
    this commit) being set/initialized in record_minimal_symbol() using
    using the objfile in the context in which the symbol was created.

    Simon further observed:

      Today, a single copy is created, as symtabs are shared between
      objfiles.  This means that everything that we store into a symbol
      must be independent of any objfile.  However, the value of the
      maybe_copied field is dependent on the objfile in the context of
      which the symbol was created.  Meaning that when the symbol is
      re-used in the context of another objfile, the maybe_copied value is
      not right in the context of that objfile.

      So I think it means there isn't a single "is this symbol maybe
      copied" value, but instead "is this symbol maybe copied, in the
      context of this given objfile".  And the answer is yes or no,
      depending on whether the objfile is mainline.  So maybe_copied
      should become a method that takes an objfile and returns an answer
      based on that.

    Simon's full review can be found here:

      https://sourceware.org/pipermail/gdb-patches/2021-May/178855.html

    Simon also provided a patch which implements this suggestion.  The
    current patch is mostly his work, though I did make some adjustments
    during a rebase in addition to making some changes to account for a
    concern from Tom Tromey.

    During his review of the v3 series, Tom noted, "The old approach was
    specific to ELF, while the new approach will be used by any object
    format." Tom further observed, "...it seems like it could result in an
    incorrect evaluation in some scenario."  This seemed plausible to me,
    so I introduced the flag 'object_format_has_copy_relocs' to struct
    objfile.  It is set at the end of elf_symfile_read() in elfread.c.
    The minimal_symbol::maybe_copied method tests this new flag, forcing
    this method to return false when the flag is not set.  If we find that
    other object file formats use the same copy reloc mechanism as ELF,
    then 'object_format_has_copy_relocs' should be set for objfiles using
    those formats.

    Lastly, I'll note that this is a strange use case.  It's far more
    common to either let gdb figure out which file to load by itself when
    attaching, i.e.

    (gdb) attach 4104360
    Attaching to process 4104360
    Reading symbols from /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach...
    Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6...
    (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6)
    Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2...
    (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2)
    0x00007fdb1fc33f27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6
    (gdb) p foo
    $1 = 42

    ...or to use the "file" command prior to the attach, like this:

    (gdb) file add-symbol-file-attach
    Reading symbols from add-symbol-file-attach...
    (gdb) attach 4104360
    Attaching to program: /tmp/add-symbol-file-attach, process 4104360
    Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6...
    (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/libc.so.6)
    Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2...
    (No debugging symbols found in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2)
    0x00007fdb1fc33f27 in pause () from /lib64/libc.so.6

    Both of these more common scenarios work perfectly fine; using
    "add-symbol-file" to load the program to which you will attach
    isn't recommended as a normal use case.  That said, it's bad for
    gdb to assert, hence this fix.

    Reviewed-by: Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>
    Co-Authored-by: Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>
    Approved-by: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>
    Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug symtab/27831] add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

--- Comment #5 from cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org <cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org> ---
The master branch has been updated by Kevin Buettner <kevinb@sourceware.org>:

https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=79771b88bf22d7b4499363ba8a2dbd6a534deb98

commit 79771b88bf22d7b4499363ba8a2dbd6a534deb98
Author: Kevin Buettner <kevinb@redhat.com>
Date:   Thu Aug 31 07:44:13 2023 -0700

    [symtab/27831] New test case: gdb.base/add-symbol-file-attach.exp

    This commit adds a new test case for bug 27831.  See the contents
    of the .exp file for a description of what it's about.

    Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831
    Approved-By: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug symtab/27831] add-symbol-file, attach, print global-sym related assertion failure

[kevinb at redhat dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27831

Kevin Buettner <kevinb at redhat dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Resolution|---                         |FIXED
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED

--- Comment #6 from Kevin Buettner <kevinb at redhat dot com> ---
Closing this bug since it should be fixed now.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.