Failure to backtrace out of glibc system call stubs

This failure goes away if debug information for glibc is present.

The problem is that without CFI debug data, GDB is currently unable to backtrace out of the "kill" routine correctly:

000259f0 <kill>:
   259f0: e1a0c007 mov ip, r7
   259f4: e3a07025 mov r7, #37 ; 0x25
   259f8: ef000000 svc 0x00000000
   259fc: e1a0700c mov r7, ip
   25a00: e3700a01 cmn r0, #4096 ; 0x1000
   25a04: 312fff1e bxcc lr
   25a08: eaffbf0c b 15640 <__libc_start_main+0x1d0>
   25a0c: e320f000 nop {0}

because it doesn't detect that r7 has been saved into ip. (Thus, when backtracing out of the caller requires use of the caller's r7, GDB uses the incorrect value.)

Unfortunately, even with my patch to add support for ARM unwind tables (#661253), this particular case *still* is not handled, because the kill routine doesn't even provide correct ARM unwind tables. See the discussion leading up to this:
http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2010-12/msg00005.html

So it looks like a glibc fix will be required in addition to the #661253 GDB fix.

This problem is also the root cause of the following failures:

FAIL: gdb.base/foll-vfork.exp: vfork parent follow, finish after tcatch vfork
FAIL: gdb.base/foll-vfork.exp: vfork child follow, finish after tcatch vfork

GDB part of the fix now committed.

glibc part of the fix is now committed to libc-ports:

[PATCH][arm] Create ARM unwind records for system call stubs
http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-ports/2011-03/msg00035.html
http://sourceware.org/ml/glibc-cvs/2011-q1/msg00119.html
commit 738860089d5c510f3445f9830d9924ab58659c51

Can this be backported to the Ubuntu eglibc package?

could you point to the corresponding gdb change?

The main change (support for .ARM.exidx unwind info) is already in Ubuntu GDB (came in with the Linaro GDB merge).

There is one minor additional fix (actually a pre-existing bug in the ARM prologue parser exposed by the glibc change) that is not yet in Ubuntu GDB. This extra fix has been committed to mainline GDB:
http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2011-03/msg00964.html
and also to Linaro GDB (rev. 32997).

This bug was fixed in the package eglibc - 2.13-0ubuntu9

---------------
eglibc (2.13-0ubuntu9) natty; urgency=low

  * Update to r13241 from the eglibc-2.13 branch.
  * Create ARM unwind records for system call stubs (Ulrich Weigand).
    LP: #684218.
 -- Matthias Klose <email address hidden> Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:35:13 +0100

I've verified that the problem is fixed with 2.13-0ubuntu9. Thanks!

This bug was fixed in the package gdb - 7.2-1ubuntu11

---------------
gdb (7.2-1ubuntu11) natty; urgency=low

  * Fix minor ARM prologue parsing bug (Ulrich Weigand). LP: #684218.
 -- Matthias Klose <email address hidden> Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:41:22 +0100