+2021-02-20
+
+ * GCC: Lowering DWARF_FRAME_REGISTERS, once I rebuilt the
+ compiler, libgcc, and the test program, avoided the problem. That
+ didn't make much sense, so I reversed that change and got back to
+ debugging. The signal frame seemed to be unwound correctly, but
+ instead of using the linux-unwind fallback frame stuff, that I'd
+ messed with a week before, I noticed it was using frame info from
+ the __sigtramp64rt (sp?) entry point in the kernel-supplied vdso.
+ Though I'm pretty sure that changing that file got me some
+ different results the week before, with vdso it couldn't possibly
+ be where things got wrong. So I proceeded to unwinding the frame
+ until we hit the caller of the infinitely-recursive function, and
+ found we got to the end of the stack before reaching it. Huh? A
+ GDB stack frame also hit the same problem. Oh, maybe there was
+ something wrong with the frame info for those early calls in the
+ thread. But the stack frame only stopped at the third or fourth
+ recursive call. That seemed fishy, so I started the program over,
+ and checked the stack trace at the point of the signal delivery,
+ and found it was fine. I stepped into the signal handler, and
+ into the exception raising machinery, and it was still fine. Only
+ after we started the unwinding did it get corrupted. At first I
+ suspected something going wrong because of out-of-range accesses
+ to the regs array, recompiled compiler and library and program
+ just to be sure, and still the same issue. Finally, then it
+ occurred to me to check where the alternate stack stack, in which
+ the stack overflow signal was handled, and found it to be running
+ into the other end of the task's stack. Turns out the Ada
+ runtime, when starting a task, allocates an alt stack to handle
+ stack overflows out of the stack itself. With the larger register
+ file, unwinding was taking up more of the alt stack space,
+ overflowing it and thus overwriting part of the task's call stack,
+ corrupting it to the point that the unwinder could no longer reach
+ the exception handler in the task setup code, supposed to catch an
+ escaping exception for the task parent to analyze/reraise.
+ Growing the alt stack size in the Ada runtime fixes the problem,
+ but since this explains why lowering DWARF_FRAME_REGISTERS avoided
+ the problem, I'm now happy to have it set to the lower value, at
+ least until call-saved SVP64 regs are needed. Adjusted other
+ references to ARG_POINTER_REGNUM in libgcc to use a fixed index.
+ Wrote a blog post about this, while regstrapping the fix.
+ https://www.fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/2021-02-20-longest-debugging-session.en.html
+ Success, no regressions. (9:09)
+
+2021-02-13
+
+ * GCC: Found libgcc/config/linux-unwind.h using GCC's internal
+ register numbers, and thus in need of renumbering as well. Alas,
+ the right fix didn't jump at me. There's some confusion about
+ using mapped register numbers or not. Using the pristine
+ libgcc_eh.a to link the program built with the new compiler, using
+ newly-built libraries, it works, but with the new libgcc_eh.a, it
+ fails, whether using 291 or 99 or 67 for R_AR, that used to be
+ ARG_POINTER_REGNUM. Changing R_AR and rebuilding doesn't alter
+ anything within gcc/ada, so it's not the Ada runtime. I guess
+ I may have to go back to debugging, as it's not clear whether GCC
+ is losing track of the frames or not finding the handler that
+ would propagate the EH to the thread that activated the task.
+ Tried experimenting with overriding DWARF_FRAME_REGISTERS to its
+ original value. (6:13)
+
+2021-02-10
+
+ * MW (0:48)
+
+2021-02-09
+
+ * VC (1:59)
+
+2021-02-05
+
+ * GCC: Started investigating the remaining regressions, all in
+ Ada. They all turn out to be -fstack-check tests. (0:40)
+
2021-01-31
* GCC: Started debugging regressions in the stage1 non-svp64