Coldfire/RTEMS Debugging

[Steve Strobel]

I have been using m68k-bdm-elf-gdb with a P&E parallel port BDM 
interface to debug Coldfire targets running RTEMS for the past few 
years.  My new computer didn't have a parallel port and the PCI card 
I got to add one doesn't support the standard I/O address for LPT 
ports, so I am in need of a modified debugger.  I believe that last 
time I built GDB that I used the GDB source from the sourceforge BDM 
Tools project, without any RTEMS patches.  Is that the best thing to 
do now, or would there be benefits in also applying the RTEMS patches?

Is remote debugging (either via serial or ethernet) possible on the 
Coldfire?  In Oct 2004, Chris Johns wrote, "I do not know of a stub 
for remote ethernet debugging if BDM is not connected" 
(<http://www.rtems.com/ml/rtems-users/2004/october/msg00338.html>). 
Later in that thread, RTEMS librdbg, <
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gdbstubs/
 > and <
http://www.kegel.com/linux/gdbserver.html
 > were all mentioned, but I never saw anyone say that any of them 
were working for the Coldfire.
What about RTEMS 
awareness?  <http://www.rtems.org/wiki/index.php/DebuggingHints> 
says, "Currently GDB is not RTEMS aware. GDB scripts exist that can 
help..." but the RTEMS/GDB User's Guide at 
<http://www.rtems.org/onlinedocs/doc-current/share/rtems/pdf/rtems_gdb.pdf> 
talks about thread control.  Is that just using the scripts?  If so, 
I presume that they will work with the stock GDB.

How do people use the pre-compiled m68k binaries from the RTEMS site 
(such as 
<ftp://ftp.rtems.com/pub/rtems/cygwin/rtems-4.6/rtems-4.6-gdb-5.2-1/rtems-4.6-m68k-rtems-gdb-5.2-1.tar.bz2> 
if they don't support BDM or remote debugging?  I must be missing 
something obvious.  Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Steve



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Steve Strobel
Link Communications, Inc.
1035 Cerise Rd
Billings, MT 59101-7378
(406) 245-5002 ext 102
(406) 245-4889 (fax)
WWW: http://www.link-comm.com
MailTo:steve.strobel at link-comm.com