Chapter 12: A Few More Kernel Debugging Approaches

At the outset, back in Chapter 2, Approaches to Kernel and Driver Debugging, we covered various approaches to kernel debugging. (In that chapter, Table 2.5 provides a quick summary of kernel debug tools and techniques versus the various types of kernel defects; take another look.) The previous chapters of this book have covered many (if not most) of the tools and techniques mentioned, but certainly not all of them.

Here, we intend to merely introduce ideas and frameworks not covered so far (or just briefly mentioned) that you might find useful when debugging Linux at the level of the OS/drivers. We have neither the intent nor the bandwidth (space/pages) to go into these topics in depth, but feel free to use the links in the Further reading section to go deeper! Nevertheless, there are important topics covered in this chapter.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

• An introduction to the...