Comment 20 for bug 1325503

Don't know if anyone is still working on this problem (i.e. corrupt stack on arm in gdb), but I've found a solution. Any code that is compiled with -g seems to work fine with gdb, as far as generating a backtrace. The problem is that most system library code is built without -g, so gdb doesn't have whatever information is necessary to unwind the stack properly.

It seems that gcc, with the -g option, adds .cfi directives into the assembler code, and gdb needs that info. Remove the .cfi directives and you get the "Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)" error.

Even a very simple program with subroutine calls (similar to below) will exhibit this problem:

void foo(int i)
{
    if (i < 100) foo(i+1);
    printf("i=%d\n", i);
}

main()
{
    foo(0);
}

When compiled without -g each time the program calls foo the stack looks to gdb like it's corrupted, and only the topmost level is shown, along with the error. Compile with -g and everything works, at least until you step into printf, which wasn't compiled with -g.

Once you step out of printf you'll get your stack back.

This feels like a compiler bug to me, i.e. gcc __SHOULD__ generate at least the minimal set of .cfi directives that are needed for gdb to generate a backtrace, regardless of whether -g is specified or not.