Normally when you run a program through GDB you can press Ctrl+C to interrupt it, e.g. if it gets stuck in an infinite loop and you want to get a backtrace.
I'm debugging a program (xmms2d as it happens) but in this program only, when I press Ctrl+C it gets treated as if GDB was not running - the program shuts down cleanly and then GDB tells me the program exited normally.
How do I get the usual GDB behaviour back, where Ctrl+C interrupts the program? Or is there another way to produce the same reaction in GDB as a Ctrl+C normally does?
I'll bet that xmms2d is using sigwait() to handle signals, which breaks gdb's ability to catch CTRL-C. See https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9039
I got an idea for a workaround by reading Continue to debug after failed assertion on Linux? -- when I'm ready to break in gdb, I run "kill -TRAP <pid>" from another terminal window.
In the gdb prompt you can do "handle SIGINT stop" so that gdb catches CTRL-C
I had same problem caused by SDL signal handlers that interfere with gdb.
One solution I find to workaround this when starting gdb:
start
call sigignore(2)
continue
Now all CTRL-C will be ignored by application.
If you attach
to some process and want to restore it to original condition after debuging, you can do this:
set $oldcallback = signal(2, 0)
call sigignore(2)
continue
And when you are done:
call signal(2, $oldcallback)
detach
You can change GDB's input/output target using the following command:
gdb -tty = /dev/tty1
Note that running GDB under rlwrap
breaks its ability to intercept ^C
correctly. If you are doing this, then try running it without rlwrap
.