From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030611 Description of problem: This problem was originally seen when using the crash utility, (which has gdb embedded), when trying to do an "add-symbol-file" operation on a RHEL4 kernel module. However, the problem can easily be reproduced by simply running gdb standalone on the kernel module file, which must have its associated debuginfo file installed on the target system. In the example below, the RHEL4 exportfs.ko kernel module causes gdb to generate a "Dwarf Error: Could not find abbrev number 7218" error message during initialization. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): gdb-6.1post-1.20040607.43 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. On a system running RHEL4, determine the version with "uname -r", and if not already installed, install the associated kernel debuginfo package. 2. cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/fs/exportfs 3. gdb exportfs.ko Actual Results: # gdb ./fs/exportfs/exportfs.ko GNU gdb Red Hat Linux (6.1post-1.20040607.43rh) Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "ia64-redhat-linux-gnu"... Dwarf Error: Could not find abbrev number 7218 [in module /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/2.6.9-1.648_EL.netdump/kernel/fs/exportfs/exportfs.ko.debug] (gdb) Expected Results: Should initialize with no errors. Additional info:
This report was based upon the exportfs.ko module from the 2.6.9-1.648_EL kernel, which was compiled with: (gcc version 3.4.2 20041017 (Red Hat 3.4.2-6.fc3)) Running the same test on the exportfs.ko module from the 2.6.9-1.860_EL kernel, which was compiled with: (gcc version 3.4.3 20041125 (Red Hat 3.4.3-6.EL4)) the error message is no longer exhibited.