Enhanced Kernel Debugging

The dbx debugger, as it comes from the OSF, supports a read-only examination of a locally running kernel, as well as the debugging of kernel core files through the use of the -k switch.

Digital added the following two features to dbx:

• A -remote switch to enable the remote, breakpoint debugging of a running kernel across a serial line

  The protocol is multibyte, and cashing as well as a multithread extension are supported.

• A front-end to dbx, called kdbx, which supports not only the entire suite of dbx commands, but a C library API that allows programmers to write C programs to extract and format kernel data more easily than they can with just dbx -k or dbx -remote.

  The kdbx front-end ships with several ready-made extensions in the file /usr/var/kdbx.

For more information on kernel debugging, see the guide Kernel Debugging.