Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 478944
gdb stops program with "Cannot get thread event message: debugger service failed"
Last modified: 2009-12-18 02:30:37 EST
Description of problem: To debug firefox crashes (another story) I am using gdb on it. Unfortunately, execution of firefox is frequently interrupted by gdb which says: [New Thread 0x7fe1aea75950 (LWP 26614)] Cannot get thread event message: debugger service failed and goes into command mode as if this were a breakpoint. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): gdb-6.8-29.fc10.x86_64 How reproducible: Whenever I try it. Steps to Reproduce: 1. run firefox 2. discover the firefox process ID 3. $ gdb /usr/lib64/firefox-3.0.5/firefox FIREFOXPID 4. (gdb) break gdk_x_error 5. (gdb) continue 6. browse and wait for the message from gdb Actual results: [New Thread 0x7fe1aea75950 (LWP 26614)] Cannot get thread event message: debugger service failed Typing "continue" to gdb will move past this but it will stop again. Expected results: Execution continues until a breakpoint. Additional info: A relevant message on the GDB mailing list: http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb/2008-12/msg00001.html I tried running GDB as root but that seemed to change nothing.
Running firefox under GDB for many hours on F11 this way without any problem. gdb-6.8.50.20090302-21.fc11.x86_64 kernel-2.6.29.2-126.fc11.x86_64 On F10 there was a problem with utrace in its kernels, I had to use custom kernel builds for GDB with utrace disabled using this kernel.spec patch: http://people.redhat.com/jkratoch/kernel-ptrace.patch
Does Rolland McGrath know this? What is the status of this? NEXTRELEASE? It surprises me that there is no evidence of others experiencing this (only 3 on CC list). Is this a duplicate of some other report? Maybe nobody is trying to fix Firefox on F10. If so, too bad: it crashes way too often (not only on F10, mind you). Firefox problems seem to be quite complex so reliable tools are needed. (The Firefox bugs that are hitting me are actually in the libraries -- I'm not trying to disparage Firefox.)
This message is a reminder that Fedora 10 is nearing its end of life. Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 10. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '10'. Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 10's end of life. Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 10 is end of life. If you would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version of Fedora please change the 'version' of this bug to the applicable version. If you are unable to change the version, please add a comment here and someone will do it for you. Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes bugs or makes them obsolete. The process we are following is described here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
Fedora 10 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-12-17. Fedora 10 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.