gdbserver vs. gdbstub

gdbserver vs. gdbstub

[Buday Gergely]

Hi folks,

I have read Chapter 17 of the gdb manual that describes the usage of 
gdbserver and gdbstub. One thing was not clear: when to choose one over 
the other? I have a guess that one only need gdbstub when there's no 
operating system on the target machine or there are memory limitations 
that do not enable using the larger gdbserver. Am I right?

- Gergely

Re: gdbserver vs. gdbstub

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 03:26:39PM +0100, Buday Gergely wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I have read Chapter 17 of the gdb manual that describes the usage of 
> gdbserver and gdbstub. One thing was not clear: when to choose one over 
> the other? I have a guess that one only need gdbstub when there's no 
> operating system on the target machine or there are memory limitations 
> that do not enable using the larger gdbserver. Am I right?

"gdb stub" is a generic term.  GDB provides several low-level stubs,
which are basically just sample implementations; and gdbserver is
itself a "stub".  It happens to be a stub that runs in user context
on Linux systems (with potential ports to other OSs that haven't been
done yet - a Windows port was contributed, but hasn't been integrated
yet - needs more cleanup).

Another user mode stub for Linux is Red Hat's RDA, and one
non-user-mode stub for Linux is kgdb.  And then there are boot monitors
like redboot which can also serve as stubs.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC