gdb remote cross debugging fails with "Remote 'g' packet reply is too long"

Question

I have a problem with remote debugging.

Host: laptop intel i5 with ubuntu 10.10 x86 Target: Freescale iMX35 (iMX35 PDK) arm 11 Development environment: Qt Creator 2.1RC and Qt4.7.1 libraries. Arm compiler in path: /opt/freescale/usr/local/gcc-4.1.2-glibc-2.5-nptl-3/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/bin

arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc-4.1.2 arm-none-linux-gnueabi-objdump arm-none-linux-gnueabi-addr2line arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gccbug
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-ranlib arm-none-linux-gnueabi-ar
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcov arm-none-linux-gnueabi-readelf arm-none-linux-gnueabi-as
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-run arm-none-linux-gnueabi-c++
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-size arm-none-linux-gnueabi-c++filt
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gprof arm-none-linux-gnueabi-strings arm-none-linux-gnueabi-cpp arm-none-linux-gnueabi-ld
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-strip arm-none-linux-gnueabi-g++
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-nm arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-objcopy

The goal is to debug a project created with Qt. So I simply created a Qt Quick Project -> Qt Quick Application which creates a simple Hello World application (C++/Qml) I cross compile it (in debug or release) and it works fine on the target. So I'm quite sure that cross compilation is not related to the problem I'll show you.

I downloaded gdb 7.2 and performed the following operation:

$ export PATH=/opt/freescale/usr/local/gcc-4.1.2-glibc-2.5-nptl-3/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/bin:$PATH
$ cd /home/elux/iMX35/gdb-7.2/
$ ./configure --target=arm-none-linux-gnueabi --build=i686
$ make
$ sudo make install

$ export CC=arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc
$ export LD=arm-none-linux-gnueabi-ld
$ cd gdb/gdbserver/
$ ./configure --build=i386 --host=arm-none-linux-gnueabi --target=arm-none-linux- gnueabi
$ make

$ sudo cp gdbserver /home/elux/MX35/ltib/rootfs/usr/bin/ (to copy gdbserver to target)

Then on the target:

$ gdbserver 10.10.10.1:4000 Test
Process Test created; pid = 2194
Listening on port 4000

On the target:

$ arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gdb Test (Test is cross-compiled it Qt Creator in debug mode) GNU gdb (GDB) 7.2
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "--host=i686 --target=arm-none-linux-gnueabi".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/...
Reading symbols from /home/elux/iMX35/ltib/rpm/BUILD/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.1 /platform/Test-build-arm/Test...done.
(gdb) target remote 10.10.10.2:4000
Remote debugging using 10.10.10.2:4000
warning: Can not parse XML target description; XML support was disabled at compile time
warning: Unable to find dynamic linker breakpoint function.
GDB will be unable to debug shared library initializers
and track explicitly loaded dynamic code.
0x400007e0 in ?? ()
(gdb)

and

(gdb) set solib-absolute-prefix /home/elux/iMX35/ltib/rootfs/
Reading symbols from /home/elux/iMX35/ltib/rootfs/lib/ld-linux.so.3...done.
Loaded symbols for /home/elux/iMX35/ltib/rootfs/lib/ld-linux.so.3

but

(gdb) set architecture armv5te
The target architecture is assumed to be armv5te
Remote 'g' packet reply is too long: 00000000a7ee8ebe0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000b0ed8ebe00000000e007004010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

(gdb) b main
Remote 'g' packet reply is too long: 00000000a7ee8ebe0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000b0ed8ebe00000000e007004010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Have you got any idea what this problem is related to? How can I resolve it?

Answer 1

I was able to use gdb-multiarch instead and resolved my issue.

Answer 2

As I ran into this recently on Ubuntu 12.04 (x86_64) and solved it in a different way, I thought I'd comment. The kicker in this case is that Ubuntu seems to have gdb with libexpat enabled. Some tinkering later and this solved it for me:

set architecture i386:x86-64:intel

So it appears this can result when there is a mismatch of architectures as well.

Answer 3

I had this same problem trying to debug a Freescale ARM on an i5 machine running Ubuntu 11.10 64bit.

The fix that worked for me was to specify the --with-expat flag when configuring gdb. I also had to install the libexpat1-dev package.

Explanation here