Installation

From PyPI

pip install sdb-debugger

From Source

Ensure you have the following dependencies:

• Python 3.10 or newer
• libkdumpfile (optional - needed for kdump-compressed crash dumps)
• drgn

Note that in order for drgn to support kdump files it needs to be compiled with libkdumpfile. Unfortunately that means that users should always install libkdumpfile first before installing drgn.

Then install sdb:

git clone https://github.com/sdimitro/sdb.git
cd sdb
pip install .

For development installation (editable mode with dev dependencies):

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quickstart

Running sudo sdb attaches sdb to the running kernel by default. To debug a running program, run sudo sdb -p <PID>. For post-mortem debugging (either a kernel crash dump or a userland core dump), use sudo sdb <vmlinux path|userland binary path> <dump>.

$ sudo sdb
sdb> find_task 1 | member comm
(char [16])"systemd"
sdb> find_task 1 | stack
TASK_STRUCT        STATE             COUNT
==========================================
0xffff89cea441dd00 INTERRUPTIBLE         1
                  __schedule+0x2e5
                  schedule+0x33
                  schedule_hrtimeout_range_clock+0xfd
                  schedule_hrtimeout_range+0x13
                  ep_poll+0x40a
                  do_epoll_wait+0xb7
                  __x64_sys_epoll_wait+0x1e
                  do_syscall_64+0x57
                  entry_SYSCALL_64+0x7c
sdb> addr modules | lxlist "struct module" list | member name ! sort | head -n 3
(char [56])"aesni_intel"
(char [56])"async_memcpy"
(char [56])"async_pq"

Developer Testing

First, install the development dependencies:

pip install -e ".[dev]"
# Or using requirements file:
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

Linting

pylint -d duplicate-code -d invalid-name sdb
pylint -d duplicate-code -d invalid-name tests

Ruff (Fast Linting and Formatting)

Ruff is a fast Python linter and formatter that combines multiple tools:

ruff check sdb tests

Type Checking

mypy --strict --show-error-codes -p sdb
mypy --strict --ignore-missing-imports --show-error-codes -p tests

Note: pytest is required for mypy to properly type-check test decorators.

Style Checks

yapf --diff --style google --recursive sdb
yapf --diff --style google --recursive tests

If yapf has suggestions you can apply them automatically by substituting --diff with -i like this:

yapf -i --style google --recursive sdb
yapf -i --style google --recursive tests

Unit Testing

Unit tests don't require crash dumps and can be run quickly:

pytest -v --cov sdb --cov-report xml tests/unit

Integration Testing

Integration tests require crash/core dumps to test against live debugging scenarios:

.github/scripts/download-dumps-from-gdrive.sh
.github/scripts/extract-dump.sh dump.201912060006.tar.lzma
.github/scripts/extract-dump.sh dump.202303131823.tar.gz
pytest -v --cov sdb --cov-report xml tests/integration

To run all tests (unit + integration):

pytest -v --cov sdb --cov-report xml tests

If you want pytest to stop on the first failure it encounters add -x/--exitfirst to the command.

If you've added new test commands or found mistakes in the current reference output and you want to (re)generate reference output, download all crash/core dumps (or the specific one you want to correct) and run the following:

PYTHONPATH=$(pwd) python3 tests/integration/gen_regression_output.py