Determining the correct thread to debug in GDB

Question

I\'ve run into some problems debugging a multi-threaded process using GDB. I have a multi-threaded process that splinters off into several (8 or 9) different threads, and I am t

Answer 1

I find myself doing this all the time:

> t a a f

Short for:

> thread apply all frame

Of course, other variants are possible:

> t a a bt 3

Which prints the bottom 3 frames of each thread's stack. (You can also use negative numbers to get the top N frames of the stack)

Answer 2

You can use command thread or info threads to find out the current thread number after breakpoint hit

(gdb) thread
[Current thread is 1 (Thread 0xb790d6c0 (LWP 2519))]
(gdb)

(gdb) info threads
  17 Thread 0xb789cb90 (LWP 2536)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  16 Thread 0xb769bb90 (LWP 2537)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  15 Thread 0xb749ab90 (LWP 2543)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  14 Thread 0xb7282b90 (LWP 2544)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  13 Thread 0xb5827b90 (LWP 2707)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  12 Thread 0xb5626b90 (LWP 2708)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  11 Thread 0xb5425b90 (LWP 2709)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  10 Thread 0xb5161b90 (LWP 2713)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  9 Thread 0xb4ef9b90 (LWP 2715)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  8 Thread 0xb4af7b90 (LWP 2717)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  7 Thread 0xb46ffb90 (LWP 2718)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  6 Thread 0xb44feb90 (LWP 2726)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  5 Thread 0xb42fdb90 (LWP 2847)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  4 Thread 0xb40fcb90 (LWP 2848)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  3 Thread 0xb3efbb90 (LWP 2849)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
  2 Thread 0xb3cfab90 (LWP 2850)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
* 1 Thread 0xb790d6c0 (LWP 2519)  0xb7fc6402 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
(gdb)

An asterisk `*' to the left of the gdb thread number indicates the current thread. See here.