DebuggingProgramCrash

Revision 25 as of 2006-11-01 18:48:09

Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://people.ubuntu.com/~pitti/ddebs edgy main universe

Import Martin's public key to your keyring:

wget http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x0DE7276D5E0577F2 -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Then run

sudo apt-get update

to update your package list.

The debug symbol packages have the -dbgsym suffix attached, so to install the debug symbols for the package yelp, you run:

sudo apt-get install yelp-dbgsym

Now you make a ["Backtrace"].
You can also run ["Valgrind"], if the program crashes with a "Segmentation fault" or "Bus error".
Optionally, you may be asked to produce an ["Strace"].

Old notes

Check if the package has a debugging version available. In general, debugging packages will be named with a -dbg suffix
If not, you can generally* build one this way:
- Something to keep in mind: if you would like to create a build you're going to need to have the relevant deb-src lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list
1. Install the development scripts:
```
sudo apt-get install devscripts
```
2. Install the build-time dependencies for the package:
```
sudo apt-get build-dep <package>
```
3. Build .debs for debugging:
```
export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="debug nostrip noopt"
fakeroot apt-get source -b <package>
```
4. Install the needed .debs (they will be in the current working directory if the build succeeded):
```
sudo debi <package>*.changes
```

* most of the packages support the build of debugging version in this way. If that doesn't work for a package you can open a bug against it.