In this course, attendees will learn how to debug and profile embedded Linux systems.
The following topics will be covered:
- Introduction to software debugging, the software debugging process, main types of problems and debugging mechanisms, tools and techniques for debugging and profiling Linux systems.
- The development platform that will be used in the training, hardware features, references and documentation, development environment, build systems and Buildroot.
- Introduction to debugging applications with GDB, basic commands, execution control, breakpoints, watchpoints, catchpoints, printing variables and expressions, displaying memory, the stack backtrace, TUI mode, integration with DDD and Eclipse.
- Extracting information from kernel virtual file systems (procfs, sysfs, debugfs), debugging the Linux kernel with logging tools and techniques (printk, dynamic debug), analysis of kernel crash messages (oops and panic) with addr2line and GDB, debugging kernel modules, pstore, kdump.
- Static and dynamic tracing in kernel space, kernel tracing tools and techniques (ftrace, trace-cmd, kernelshark, systemtap), introduction to ftrace, tracing function calls, latency times and stack consumption, introduction to the trace-cmd command, graphical visualization of tracing data with the kernelshark tool.
- Interactive Linux kernel debugging with GDB (kgdb, gdbclient and agent-proxy), GDB and code optimization, KDB debug front-end, hardware-level debugging with JTAG.
- Linux kernel debugging frameworks, “Kernel Hacking” configuration menu, kernel memory leak detection with kmemleak, magic sysrq key, kernel deadlock detection.
- User space logging tools and techniques, crashes and core dump analysis in Linux, analyzing crashes in dynamic libraries with GDB.
- User space tracing tools, strace, ltrace, etrace, uprobe, perf, systemtap, lttng-ust.
- Using gdbserver to remote debug Linux applications, GDB and dynamic libraries, GDB and code optimization, debugging multithreaded applications with GDB.
- Debugging memory usage in Linux applications, memory usage analysis tools (free, procrank, pmap), debugging and identifying memory leaks with valgrind, mtrace, memwatch and dmalloc.
- Performance analysis in Linux systems, analysis of CPU consumption (uptime, cpuload, top, schedtop, time), memory consumption analysis (free, procrank, pmap), performance analysis with perf and oprofile, analyzing application performance with strace, ltrace and gprof.
For more details on the content of this training session, you can download the full agenda and the training slides.
Some pictures of training sessions already presented are available here.
Audience
Students, engineers and software developers of embedded Linux systems.
Requirements
Attendees should know the basics of the GNU/Linux command line interface, development of embedded Linux systems, intermediate knowledge on developing programs in C/C++ and compiler tools like gcc and make.
Equipment
All required development tools and equipment will be provided by Embedded Labworks.
Material
The course material contains the slides of the presentations, book of activities and exercises, reference guides, and additional reference documents. All materials will be provided in an electronic format at the start of the training session.
Development kits
The training exercises will be performed on the Colibri i.MX6 Toradex module.
Open sessions
The open training sessions are presented in a pleasant environment, with a properly equipped laboratory and Internet access. Classes are usually presented full time, with a stop for lunch and a coffee break in the morning.
If you are interested in participating in the training but there is no open session available, please fill the pre-registration form clicking here. We will contact you as soon as a new training session is opened.
In-company sessions
If you plan to train your team or a group of people, consider a training session in your company.
In-company classes have the same characteristics of an open training session. In this model, the company is responsible for providing the necessary resources needed for the training, including room, data projector and development machines. This model also brings big advantages for the company, since the cost of transportation and accommodation of several employees is reduced only to the instructor.
If your company has a special requirement, we can study a program that meets your needs in a specific way, like preparing the training material for a specific hardware platform or developing additional content. Do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail or leaving a message in the contact page.
Take the training to your city
You can take the training session to your community at any city in Brazil!
Can't afford to take the course in São Paulo? Do you have a study group and want to learn more about a specific technology? Do you coordinate or participate in the coordination of a course at your university and would like to train the teachers and students? Do you have a space and would like to get some friends together and spend enjoyable hours learning about embedded systems?
Send an e-mail or leave a message in the contact page. Send the name of the course you are interested and the city. If we can get together a group of interested people, we can bring the training to your city!
Questions?
If you have any question, please send an e-mail or leave us a message on the contact page.
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