LIBUNWIND(3) Programming Library LIBUNWIND(3)NAMElibunwind-- a (mostly) platform-independent unwind API
SYNOPSIS
#include <libunwind.h>
int unw_getcontext(unw_context_t *);
int unw_init_local(unw_cursor_t *, unw_context_t *);
int unw_init_remote(unw_cursor_t *, unw_addr_space_t, void *);
int unw_step(unw_cursor_t *);
int unw_get_reg(unw_cursor_t *, unw_regnum_t, unw_word_t *);
int unw_get_fpreg(unw_cursor_t *, unw_regnum_t, unw_fpreg_t *);
int unw_set_reg(unw_cursor_t *, unw_regnum_t, unw_word_t);
int unw_set_fpreg(unw_cursor_t *, unw_regnum_t, unw_fpreg_t);
int unw_resume(unw_cursor_t *);
unw_addr_space_t unw_local_addr_space;
unw_addr_space_t unw_create_addr_space(unw_accessors_t, int);
void unw_destroy_addr_space(unw_addr_space_t);
unw_accessors_t unw_get_accessors(unw_addr_space_t);
void unw_flush_cache(unw_addr_space_t, unw_word_t, unw_word_t);
int unw_set_caching_policy(unw_addr_space_t, unw_caching_policy_t);
const char *unw_regname(unw_regnum_t);
int unw_get_proc_info(unw_cursor_t *, unw_proc_info_t *);
int unw_get_save_loc(unw_cursor_t *, int, unw_save_loc_t *);
int unw_is_fpreg(unw_regnum_t);
int unw_is_signal_frame(unw_cursor_t *);
int unw_get_proc_name(unw_cursor_t *, char *, size_t, unw_word_t *);
void _U_dyn_register(unw_dyn_info_t *);
void _U_dyn_cancel(unw_dyn_info_t *);
LOCAL UNWINDING
Libunwind is very easy to use when unwinding a stack from within a run‐
ning program. This is called local unwinding. Say you want to unwind
the stack while executing in some function F(). In this function, you
would call unw_getcontext() to get a snapshot of the CPU registers
(machine-state). Then you initialize an unwind cursor based on this
snapshot. This is done with a call to unw_init_local(). The cursor now
points to the current frame, that is, the stack frame that corresponds
to the current activation of function F(). The unwind cursor can then
be moved ``up'' (towards earlier stack frames) by calling unw_step().
By repeatedly calling this routine, you can uncover the entire
call-chain that led to the activation of function F(). A positive
return value from unw_step() indicates that there are more frames in
the chain, zero indicates that the end of the chain has been reached,
and any negative value indicates that some sort of error has occurred.
While it is not possible to directly move the unwind cursor in the
``down'' direction (towards newer stack frames), this effect can be
achieved by making copies of an unwind cursor. For example, a program
that sometimes has to move ``down'' by one stack frame could maintain
two cursor variables: ``curr'' and ``prev''. The former would be used
as the current cursor and prev would be maintained as the ``previous
frame'' cursor by copying the contents of curr to prev right before
calling unw_step(). With this approach, the program could move one
step ``down'' simply by copying back prev to curr whenever that is nec‐
essary. In the most extreme case, a program could maintain a separate
cursor for each call frame and that way it could move up and down the
callframe-chain at will.
Given an unwind cursor, it is possible to read and write the CPU regis‐
ters that were preserved for the current stack frame (as identified by
the cursor). Libunwind provides several routines for this purpose:
unw_get_reg() reads an integer (general) register, unw_get_fpreg()
reads a floating-point register, unw_set_reg() writes an integer regis‐
ter, and unw_set_fpreg() writes a floating-point register. Note that,
by definition, only the preserved machine state can be accessed during
an unwind operation. Normally, this state consists of the callee-saved
(``preserved'') registers. However, in some special circumstances
(e.g., in a signal handler trampoline), even the caller-saved
(``scratch'') registers are preserved in the stack frame and, in those
cases, libunwind will grant access to them as well. The exact set of
registers that can be accessed via the cursor depends, of course, on
the platform. However, there are two registers that can be read on all
platforms: the instruction pointer (IP), sometimes also known as the
``program counter'', and the stack pointer (SP). In libunwind, these
registers are identified by the macros UNW_REG_IP and UNW_REG_SP,
respectively.
Besides just moving the unwind cursor and reading/writing saved regis‐
ters, libunwind also provides the ability to resume execution at an
arbitrary stack frame. As you might guess, this is useful for imple‐
menting non-local gotos and the exception handling needed by some
high-level languages such as Java. Resuming execution with a particular
stack frame simply requires calling unw_resume() and passing the cursor
identifying the target frame as the only argument.
Normally, libunwind supports both local and remote unwinding (the lat‐
ter will be explained in the next section). However, if you tell libun‐
wind that your program only needs local unwinding, then a special
implementation can be selected which may run much faster than the
generic implementation which supports both kinds of unwinding. To
select this optimized version, simply define the macro UNW_LOCAL_ONLY
before including the headerfile <libunwind.h>. It is perfectly OK for
a single program to employ both local-only and generic unwinding. That
is, whether or not UNW_LOCAL_ONLY is defined is a choice that each
source-file (compilation-unit) can make on its own. Independent of the
setting(s) of UNW_LOCAL_ONLY, you'll always link the same library into
the program (normally -lunwind). Furthermore, the portion of libunwind
that manages unwind-info for dynamically generated code is not affected
by the setting of UNW_LOCAL_ONLY.
If we put all of the above together, here is how we could use libunwind
to write a function ``show_backtrace()'' which prints a classic stack
trace:
#define UNW_LOCAL_ONLY
#include <libunwind.h>
void show_backtrace (void) {
unw_cursor_t cursor; unw_context_t uc;
unw_word_t ip, sp;
unw_getcontext(&uc);
unw_init_local(&cursor, &uc);
while (unw_step(&cursor) > 0) {
unw_get_reg(&cursor, UNW_REG_IP, &ip);
unw_get_reg(&cursor, UNW_REG_SP, &sp);
printf ("ip = %lx, sp = %lx\n", (long) ip, (long) sp);
}
}
REMOTE UNWINDING
Libunwind can also be used to unwind a stack in a ``remote'' process.
Here, ``remote'' may mean another process on the same machine or even a
process on a completely different machine from the one that is running
libunwind. Remote unwinding is typically used by debuggers and
instruction-set simulators, for example.
Before you can unwind a remote process, you need to create a new
address-space object for that process. This is achieved with the
unw_create_addr_space() routine. The routine takes two arguments: a
pointer to a set of accessor routines and an integer that specifies the
byte-order of the target process. The accessor routines provide libun‐
wind with the means to communicate with the remote process. In particu‐
lar, there are callbacks to read and write the process's memory, its
registers, and to access unwind information which may be needed by
libunwind.
With the address space created, unwinding can be initiated by a call to
unw_init_remote(). This routine is very similar to unw_init_local(),
except that it takes an address-space object and an opaque pointer as
arguments. The routine uses these arguments to fetch the initial
machine state. Libunwind never uses the opaque pointer on its own, but
instead just passes it on to the accessor (callback) routines. Typi‐
cally, this pointer is used to select, e.g., the thread within a
process that is to be unwound.
Once a cursor has been initialized with unw_init_remote(), unwinding
works exactly like in the local case. That is, you can use unw_step()
to move ``up'' in the call-chain, read and write registers, or resume
execution at a particular stack frame by calling unw_resume.
CROSS-PLATFORM AND MULTI-PLATFORM UNWINDING
Libunwind has been designed to enable unwinding across platforms
(architectures). Indeed, a single program can use libunwind to unwind
an arbitrary number of target platforms, all at the same time!
We call the machine that is running libunwind the host and the machine
that is running the process being unwound the target. If the host and
the target platform are the same, we call it native unwinding. If they
differ, we call it cross-platform unwinding.
The principle behind supporting native, cross-platform, and multi-plat‐
form unwinding is very simple: for native unwinding, a program includes
<libunwind.h> and uses the linker switch -lunwind. For cross-platform
unwinding, a program includes <libunwind-PLAT.h> and uses the linker
switch -lunwind-PLAT, where PLAT is the name of the target platform
(e.g., ia64 for IA-64, hppa-elf for ELF-based HP PA-RISC, or x86 for
80386). Multi-platform unwinding works exactly like cross-platform
unwinding, the only limitation is that a single source file (compila‐
tion unit) can include at most one libunwind header file. In other
words, the platform-specific support for each supported target needs to
be isolated in separate source files---a limitation that shouldn't be
an issue in practice.
Note that, by definition, local unwinding is possible only for the
native case. Attempting to call, e.g., unw_local_init() when targeting
a cross-platform will result in a link-time error (unresolved refer‐
ences).
THREAD- AND SIGNAL-SAFETY
All libunwind routines are thread-safe. What this means is that multi‐
ple threads may use libunwind simulatenously. However, any given cur‐
sor may be accessed by only one thread at any given time.
To ensure thread-safety, some libunwind routines may have to use lock‐
ing. Such routines must not be called from signal handlers (directly or
indirectly) and are therefore not signal-safe. The manual page for each
libunwind routine identifies whether or not it is signal-safe, but as a
general rule, any routine that may be needed for local unwinding is
signal-safe (e.g., unw_step() for local unwinding is signal-safe). For
remote-unwinding, none of the libunwind routines are guaranteed to be
signal-safe.
UNWINDING THROUGH DYNAMICALLY GENERATED CODE
Libunwind provides the routines _U_dyn_register() and _U_dyn_cancel()
to register/cancel the information required to unwind through code that
has been generated at runtime (e.g., by a just-in-time (JIT) compiler).
It is important to register the information for all dynamically gener‐
ated code because otherwise, a debugger may not be able to function
properly or high-level language exception handling may not work as
expected.
The interface for registering and canceling dynamic unwind info has
been designed for maximum efficiency, so as to minimize the performance
impact on JIT-compilers. In particular, both routines are guaranteed to
execute in ``constant time'' (O(1)) and the data-structure encapsulat‐
ing the dynamic unwind info has been designed to facilitate sharing,
such that similar procedures can share much of the underlying informa‐
tion.
For more information on the libunwind support for dynamically generated
code, see libunwind-dynamic(3).
CACHING OF UNWIND INFO
To speed up execution, libunwind may aggressively cache the information
it needs to perform unwinding. If a process changes during its life‐
time, this creates a risk of libunwind using stale data. For example,
this would happen if libunwind were to cache information about a shared
library which later on gets unloaded (e.g., via dlclose(3)).
To prevent the risk of using stale data, libunwind provides two facili‐
ties: first, it is possible to flush the cached information associated
with a specific address range in the target process (or the entire
address space, if desired). This functionality is provided by
unw_flush_cache(). The second facility is provided by
unw_set_caching_policy(), which lets a program select the exact caching
policy in use for a given address-space object. In particular, by
selecting the policy UNW_CACHE_NONE, it is possible to turn off caching
completely, therefore eliminating the risk of stale data alltogether
(at the cost of slower execution). By default, caching is enabled for
local unwinding only.
FILES
libunwind.h
Headerfile to include for native (same platform) unwinding.
libunwind-PLAT.h
Headerfile to include when the unwind target runs on platform
PLAT. For example, to unwind an IA-64 program, the header file
libunwind-ia64.h should be included.
-lunwind
Linker-switch to add when building a program that does native
(same platform) unwinding.
-lunwind-PLAT
Linker-switch to add when building a program that unwinds a
program on platform PLAT. For example, to (cross-)unwind an
IA-64 program, the linker switch -lunwind-ia64 should be added.
Note: multiple such switches may need to be specified for pro‐
grams that can unwind programs on multiple platforms.
SEE ALSOlibunwind-dynamic(3), libunwind-ia64(3), libunwind-ptrace(3), libun‐
wind-setjmp(3), unw_create_addr_space(3), unw_destroy_addr_space(3),
unw_flush_cache(3), unw_get_accessors(3), unw_get_fpreg(3),
unw_get_proc_info(3), unw_get_proc_name(3), unw_get_reg(3), unw_getcon‐
text(3), unw_init_local(3), unw_init_remote(3), unw_is_fpreg(3),
unw_is_signal_frame(3), unw_regname(3), unw_resume(3),
unw_set_caching_policy(3), unw_set_fpreg(3), unw_set_reg(3),
unw_step(3), _U_dyn_register(3), _U_dyn_cancel(3)AUTHOR
David Mosberger-Tang
Hewlett-Packard Labs
Palo-Alto, CA 94304
Email: davidm@hpl.hp.com
WWW: http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/libunwind/.
Programming Library 05 August 2004 LIBUNWIND(3)
