Kernel Debug Howto

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 2:24 AM, HeTak <hetakcoder at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 1:41 PM, Kristof Provost <kp at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > > On 25 Jul 2015, at 10:54, HeTak <hetakcoder at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I have recently started some developments on FreeBSD net section.
> > Great!
> >
> ​Thank you Kristof, b
> oth for your fast answering and your welcome.​ :)
>
> >
> > > But I am kinda new to this field. My base interest is to first
> > understand the
> > > implementation structure via tracing the code and so.
> > >
> > > I have three major questions:
> > > 1-  how to debug changes made to FreeBSD kernel?
> > > (You know, till some levels, I can even use uprintf or so, but, for
> > example
> > > inside radix.c (where I wanna understand how a route is checked to be
> > > unique and then inserted to the tree) I can't do such checks..)
> > dtrace can be quite useful to understand flows. You can grab stack traces
> > (i.e. figure out where things are called from), get function arguments, …
>
>
> > > 2- are there standards there for freebsd kernel developments of which I
> > can
> > > follow so my job gets a bit simplified?
> > > (Any development guides or so?I prospect it to be some differences
> > between
> > > system developments and normal coding, but I don't have an idea on how
> to
> > > get that).
> > There’s style(9) for coding style.
> > I’d also recommend "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD
> Operating
> > System”
> > (the second edition).
> >
>




Perhaps , the following books may also be useful :

https://www.nostarch.com/abs_bsd2.htm
( Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd Edition )

There is also a book by Michael W. Lucas about ZFS .


https://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm
( Designing BSD Rootkits )


https://www.nostarch.com/bsddrivers.htm
( FreeBSD Device Drivers )



Mehmet Erol Sanliturk




> > > 3- what is the fastest way to apply changes to FreeBSD kernel?
> > > (For now, I just follow the normal build & install kernel & reboot.)
> > I pretty much do that. Depending on what you’re working on it might be
> > easier to run it in a VM.
> > My work lately has been on the network code, so a VM is very convenient.
> > It’s not so useful if you’re working on drivers, of course.
> >
> ​
> ​Great to hear of such a tool as Dtrace and also the book. and actually I'm
> using a VM as well. ​
>
> ​I'll check these and hope to be successful through my way.
>
> >
> > Regards,
> > Kristof
>
>
> ​Cheerio,
> HeTak​
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