>Number:         5790
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       gdb can't attach running process
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    kern-bug-people (Kernel Bug People)
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Jul 18 02:05:02 1998
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Ken Raeburn
>Organization:
	
>Release:        1998-07-01
>Environment:
	
System: NetBSD kr-pc.cygnus.com 1.3F NetBSD 1.3F (RAEBURN) #0: Thu Jul 9 16:33:34 EDT 1998 root@kr-pc.cygnus.com:/dos/sys.980701/arch/i386/compile/RAEBURN i386


>Description:

I fired up gdb on an executable, and tried attaching a process running
as me, but the kernel (or possibly gdb) doesn't like it...

 kr-pc 4:43 /h/NetBSD-build/pkgsrc/www/mozilla/work/19980429/mozilla/cmd/xfe
[6] % jobs -l
[1]  +   851 Running                mozilla-export (wd: ~)
 kr-pc 4:43 /h/NetBSD-build/pkgsrc/www/mozilla/work/19980429/mozilla/cmd/xfe
[7] % gdb NetBSD1.3F_OPT.OBJ/mozilla-export 
GDB is free software and you are welcome to 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.
GDB 4.16 (i386-netbsd), Copyright 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc...
(no debugging symbols found)...
(gdb) attach 851
Attaching to program `/h/NetBSD-build/pkgsrc/www/mozilla/work/19980429/mozilla/cmd/xfe/NetBSD1.3F_OPT.OBJ/mozilla-export', process 851
ptrace: Operation not permitted.
(gdb) 

This process is very large (>30M and still growing) and appears to be
running in a loop at the moment, using more than half my cpu time.
Attaching another process (a small one, my window manager, blocked
when I attached to it instead of running) worked okay.

>How-To-Repeat:

Debug a large, looping process?

>Fix:

Give up on debugging mozilla for now...
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: