[lldb-dev] [RFC] OS Awareness in LLDB

Wed Oct 31 12:52:12 PDT 2018

Conceptually it's different levels of abstraction: a user-mode debugger
handles processes, threads as first class concepts. In kernel-mode (or
kernel land), these are just data structures that the code (the kernel) is
managing. From a more pragmatic perspective, the difference is in where the
debugging hooks are implemented and what interfaces are exposed (for
example a kernel mode debugger can normally "poke" around any piece of
memory and it has to be aware of things like VA mappings, while a user-mode
debugger is only allowed to control a limited slice of the system - ex.
control a sub-process through something like ptrace)

Unless you're specifically looking at kernel debugging I'd stay away from
that. For one thing, LLDB is mostly used as an user-mode debugger so the
impact of any improvements would be bigger.

Regarding the value of OS-awareness for user-mode debugging, I agree with
Zach - for example windbg provides both kernel mode
<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/-locks---kdext--locks->and
user mode
<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/-locks---ntsdexts-locks->!locks
commands. The only suggestion I'd add is to consider an expanded view of
the "OS" to include runtime components which may not be technically part of
what most people think of as the "OS": user-mode loaders and high level
things like std::mutex, etc.

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 12:29 PM, Alexander Polyakov <polyakov.alx at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Looks like I don't completely understand what is the difference between
> user-mode and kernel-mode from the debugger's point of view. Could you
> please explain me this?
>
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 10:22 PM Zachary Turner <zturner at google.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I don’t totally agree with this. I think there are a lot of useful os
>> awareness tasks in user mode. For example, you’re debugging a deadlock and
>> want to understand the state of other mutexes, who owns them, etc. or you
>> want to examine open file descriptors. In the case of a heap corruption you
>> may wish to study the internal structures of your process’s heap, or even
>> lower level, the os virtual memory page table structures.
>>
>> There’s quite a lot you can still do in user mode, but definitely there
>> is more in kernel mode. As Leonard said, try put WinDbg as a lot of this
>> stuff already exists so it’s a good reference
>> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 12:08 PM Alexander Polyakov via lldb-dev <
>> lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Leonard,
>>>
>>> I think it will be kernel-mode debugging since debugging an application
>>> in user mode is not an OS awareness imo. Of course, some of kernel's
>>> modules might run in user-mode, but it will be ok I think.
>>>
>>> Thanks for your reference, I'll take a look at it.
>>>
>>> Also, I found out that ARM supports OS awareness in their DS-5 debugger.
>>> They have a mechanism for adding new operating systems. All you need to do
>>> is to describe OS' model (thread's or task's structure for example). I
>>> think that is how it might be done in LLDB.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 9:26 PM Leonard Mosescu <mosescu at google.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Alexander, are you interested in user-mode, kernel-mode debugging or
>>>> both?
>>>>
>>>> Fore reference, the current state of the art regarding OS-awareness
>>>> debugging is debugging tools for windows
>>>> <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/index> (windbg
>>>> & co.). This is not surprising since the tools were developed alongside
>>>> Windows. Obviously they are specific to Windows, but it's good example of
>>>> how the OS-awareness might look like.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 11:37 AM, Alexander Polyakov via lldb-dev <
>>>> lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi lldb-dev,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm a senior student at Saint Petersburg State University. The one of
>>>>> my possible diploma themes is "OS Awareness in LLDB". Generally, the OS
>>>>> awareness extends a debugger to provide a representation of the OS threads
>>>>> - or tasks - and other relevant data structures, typically semaphores,
>>>>> mutexes, or queues.
>>>>>
>>>>> I want to ask the community if OS awareness is interesting for LLDB
>>>>> users and developers? The main goal is to create some base on top of LLDB
>>>>> that can be extended to support awareness for different operating systems.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, if you have a good article or other useful information about OS
>>>>> awareness, please share it with me.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks in advance!
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Alexander
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> lldb-dev mailing list
>>>>> lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>>>> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Alexander
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> lldb-dev mailing list
>>> lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Alexander
>
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