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You're reading from  Embedded Linux Projects Using Yocto Project Cookbook

Product typeBook
Published inMar 2015
Publisher
ISBN-139781784395186
Edition1st Edition
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Alex Gonzalez
Alex Gonzalez
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Alex Gonzalez

Alex González is a software engineering supervisor at Digi International and product owner of the Digi Embedded Yocto distribution. He started working professionally with embedded systems in 1999 and the Linux kernel in 2004, designing products for voice and video over IP networks, and followed his interests into machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies and the Internet of Things. Born and raised in Bilbao, Spain, Alex has an electronic engineering degree from the University of the Basque Country and he received his MSc in communication systems from the University of Portsmouth.
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Debugging the Linux kernel and modules


We will highlight some of the most common methods employed by kernel developers to debug kernel issues.

How to do it...

Above all, debugging the Linux kernel remains a manual process, and the most important developer tool is the ability to print debug messages.

The kernel uses the printk function, which is very similar syntactically to the printf function call from standard C libraries, with the addition of an optional log level. The allowed formats are documented in the kernel source under Documentation/printk-formats.txt.

The printk functionality needs to be compiled into the kernel with the CONFIG_PRINTK configuration variable. You can also configure the Linux kernel to prepend a precise timestamp to every message with the CONFIG_PRINTK_TIME configuration variable, or even better, with the printk.time kernel command-line argument or through sysfs under /sys/module/printk/parameters. Usually all kernels contain printk support, and the Wandboard kernel...

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Embedded Linux Projects Using Yocto Project Cookbook
Published in: Mar 2015Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781784395186

Author (1)

author image
Alex Gonzalez

Alex González is a software engineering supervisor at Digi International and product owner of the Digi Embedded Yocto distribution. He started working professionally with embedded systems in 1999 and the Linux kernel in 2004, designing products for voice and video over IP networks, and followed his interests into machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies and the Internet of Things. Born and raised in Bilbao, Spain, Alex has an electronic engineering degree from the University of the Basque Country and he received his MSc in communication systems from the University of Portsmouth.
Read more about Alex Gonzalez