Debugging Microcontrollers (camp2023)

Chaos Computer Club - Chaos Communication Camp 2023 (high quality mp4)

Debugging and Profiling ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers with GDB and Python. This talk gives you an overview of debugging ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers with a focus on the *practical* configuration and usage of the relevant tools. In particular, I will present: - Debug interfaces ([SWD](https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ihi0031/a/The-Serial-Wire-Debug-Port--SW-DP-)) and the associated debug probes ([J-Link](https://www.segger.com/products/debug-probes/j-link/), [STLink](https://www.st.com/en/development-tools/stlink-v3minie.html)) and libraries ([JLinkGDBServer](https://wiki.segger.com/J-Link_GDB_Server), [OpenOCD](https://openocd.org)). - How to install and configure [arm-none-eabi-gdb(-py3)](https://developer.arm.com/Tools%20and%20Software/GNU%20Toolchain) for debugging your ELF. - Commonly used [GDB commands and scripts](https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/index.html). - Advanced [GDB scripting via its Python API](https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Python.html). - Inspecting [peripheral state](https://github.com/pengi/arm_gdb) with [CMSIS-SVD files](https://www.keil.com/pack/doc/CMSIS/SVD/html/index.html) and custom visualizations. - Dynamic call stack tracing and graphing. - Coredumping for post-mortem debugging via [CrashDebug](https://github.com/adamgreen/CrashDebug). - [Remote GDB scripting](https://github.com/cs01/pygdbmi) via the [Machine Interface](https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/GDB_002fMI.html). - [ITM profiling](https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0403/d/Appendices/Debug-ITM-and-DWT-Packet-Protocol?lang=en) over SWO pin using [Orbuculum](https://orbcode.org/orbuculum/). - Thread/IRQ/Workqueue scheduling visualization and latency analysis using [perfetto](https://perfetto.dev). - High-bandwidth [ETM tracing](https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ihi0014/) over TRACE pins: [J-Trace](https://www.segger.com/products/debug-probes/j-trace/) and [ORBtrace mini](https://orbcode.org/orbtrace-mini/). - Interesting related projects and possible future work. This talk is meant to introduce you to what is possible with embedded debug tools in practice, rather than to give you a comprehensive lecture. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/camp2023/talk/BQF8TR/