Interaction Between Controlling and Target Process
To be able to inspect and manipulate a target process, the rtld-debugger interface employs an exported interface, an imported interface, and agents for communicating between these interfaces.
The controlling process is linked with the rtld-debugger interface provided by librtld_db.so.1, and makes requests of the interface exported from this library. This interface is defined in /usr/include/rtld_db.h. In turn, librtld_db.so.1 makes requests of the interface imported from the controlling process. This interaction allows the rtld-debugger interface to perform the following.
Look up symbols in a target process.
Read and write memory in the target process.
The imported interface consists of a number of proc_service routines that most debuggers already employ to analyze processes. These routines are described in Debugger Import Interface.
The rtld-debugger interface assumes that the process being analyzed is stopped when requests are made of the rtld-debugger interface. If this halt does not occur, data structures within the runtime linker of the target process might not be in a consistent state for examination.
The flow of information between librtld_db.so.1, the controlling process (debugger) and the target process (dynamic executable) is diagrammed in the following figure.
Figure 11-1 rtld-debugger Information Flow
Note - The rtld-debugger interface is dependent upon the proc_service interface, /usr/include/proc_service.h, which is considered experimental. The rtld-debugger interface might have to track changes in the proc_service interface as it evolves.
A sample implementation of a controlling process that uses the rtld-debugger interface is provided in the pkg:/solaris/source/demo/system package under /usr/demo/librtld_db. This debugger, rdb, provides an example of using the proc_service imported interface, and shows the required calling sequence for all librtld_db.so.1 exported interfaces. The following sections describe the rtld-debugger interfaces. More detailed information can be obtained by examining the sample debugger.