1.40. gdb

An updated gdb package that fixes various bugs is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The GNU Debugger, GDB, allows the debugging of programs written in C, C++, and other languages by executing them in a controlled fashion and printing the debug data.

This updated gdb package includes fixes for the following bugs:

* Previously, a change to the list of shared libraries could have corrupted the internal "bpstat" structure. Consequent to this, typing the "info program" command at a GDB prompt could have caused the utility to terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. This update ensures that the "bpstat" structure always contains the correct data, and running the "info program" command no longer causes the debugger to terminate unexpectedly. (BZ#660197)

* A multithreaded program can be dumped into a core file. GDB can load the core file and display the list of its threads. Previously, GDB displayed for the threads found in the core file only their LWP (light-weight process) identifiers, which match the Linux TID (Thread Identifier) values. With this update, GDB initializes the libthread_db threads debugging library when accessing a core file and now displays the pthread_t identifier in addition to the LWP identifier. (BZ#673697)

* The Fortran programming language is case-insensitive. When compiling Fortran programs with the Intel Fortran Compiler, the compiler records some debug info symbols in uppercase. The gfortran compiler writes case-insensitive symbols in lowercase. Because of this, GDB could have terminated unexpectedly while accessing uppercase characters in the debug information from the Intel Fortran Compiler. With this update, GDB properly implements case insensitivity and ignores the symbols case in the symbol files. (BZ#645773)

* GDB crashed when reading a kernel core dump file because the value of the temporary current inferior process was set to minus_one_ptid (all processes). The value is now set to null_ptid (no processes) and GDB displays the vmcore file correctly. (BZ#696464)

All users of gdb are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which resolves these issues.