MirBSD manpage: pmdb(1)
PMDB(1) BSD Reference Manual PMDB(1)
pmdb - debugger
pmdb [-c core] [-p pid] program [...]
The pmdb utility can be used to see what is happening inside a running
process or to catch program crashes and examine the state at the time of
the crash. The only way to start pmdb at this moment is to specify the
name of the program to be debugged and all its arguments on the command
line. Optionally, -c can be used to specify a core file to examine. It is
also possible to debug a process that is already running by specifying
the process's PID to the -p flag. This causes the process to be put in
STOPPED state until execution is resumed either by an explicit command to
pmdb or by exiting pmdb. The program is controlled from a command line
which usually gives the prompt "pmdb>".
A loaded program can be in one of three possible states:
LOADED This is the initial state. The program is not running, it can't
be examined (because it doesn't have any state). The only thing
that can be done to the process is to start it with the run com-
mand.
RUNNING When a process is RUNNING, the only way to affect it is through
signals sent to it. Unless a signal is ignored with the signal
ignore command, it will be caught by pmdb and the process will
go into the STOPPED state.
STOPPED A stopped process can be examined, changed and restarted with
the continue command.
examine symbol|address
Fetch and display in hex a word at address or symbol.
regs Show the contents of the processor registers at the moment
the process was STOPPED.
trace Show the function call trace of the currently STOPPED pro-
cess.
run Start running a LOADED process.
continue Continue a STOPPED process.
kill Unconditionally kills the debugged process and puts it in
the LOADED state.
signal ignore|stop signum|signame
Sets the signal state for the specified signal to either
ignore it and pass it to the process or to stop the pro-
cess.
sigstate Shows which signals are currently ignored.
setenv var val
Sets the environment variable var to the value val.
break symname|addr
Sets a breakpoint at the symbol symname or the numerical
address addr.
step Resumes execution just like continue, but stops it again as
soon as possible after executing at least one instruction.
sym_load fname offs
Loads a symbol table from the file fname at the offset
offs.
help Shows a short help.
quit Kills the process (if necessary) and exits.
exit Alias for quit.
core(5)
The pmdb debugger was written because the author believed that gdb(1) was
too bloated and hairy to run on OpenBSD/sparc64.
The command syntax is really poor and ad hoc at this moment. Most of the
command names and arguments will change as soon as the command line in-
terface is replaced.
MirBSD #10-current February 20, 2002 1