For a long time at Red Hat, all executables in RPMs were built with debuginfo enabled. While this practice makes it easier for people in support to investigate issues reported using tools such as GDB and crash, there are other important non-debugging uses for the resulting debuginfo.
Continue reading Debuginfo is not just for debugging programs
In an earlier article, Aaron Merey introduced the new elfutils debuginfo-server daemon. With this software now integrated and released into elfutils 0.178 and coming to distros near you, it’s time to consider why and how to set up such a service for yourself and your team.
Recall that debuginfod exists to distribute ELF or DWARF debugging information, plus associated source code, for a collection of binaries. If you need to run a debugger like gdb, a trace or probe tool like perf or systemtap, binary analysis tools like binutils or pahole, or binary rewriting libraries like dyninst, you will eventually need debuginfo that matches your binaries. The debuginfod client support in these tools enables a fast, transparent way of fetching this data on the fly, without ever having to stop, change to root, run all of the right yum debuginfo-install commands, and try again. Debuginfo lets you debug anywhere, anytime.
We hope this opening addresses the “why.” Now, onto the “how.”
Continue reading “Deploying debuginfod servers for your developers”
