gdb is one of the useful commands to debug what’s going wrong with your program.
Let’s try to understand how we can demystify where and what is making your code hang in a running program.
Step 1
Check the process id of your program:
ps -ef | grep program
Step 2
Attach to the stuck process via gdb, when it is in a stuck state
gdb --pid=PID
Step 3
Check the stack trace of the hanging process.
bt
Step 4
If your process is hanged in a library point and you are not able to get the context in your code, i.e file which is
# to go one level down in stack trace
frame 1
# to go two level down in stack trace
frame 2
# to go three level down in stack trace
frame 3
Step 5
Print the variable to check the context, i.e what input made the program stuck.
# dump is here the main variable which is making the replace operation stuck for me.
p dump
Step 6
Take the corrective action by understanding the nature of the problem by changing the reference of frames and see what the variable (input) making you program stuck.
- Will add more use cases, as I come along.