gdb remote debugging of c++ process started via ssh: how to redirect stdin

Question

First, some background. I run a program by starting a process on a remote_host using ssh:

ssh -T remote_host "cd ~/mydir && ~/myprogram" < input.txt

The program, myprogram, reads stdin, which is attached to a local file input.txt.

Now, I need to remotely debug this program under gdb. If there was no stdin redirection, i.e. < input.txt, I would be able to do this using gdb's target remote, something like this (at gdb prompt):

(gdb) target remote | ssh -T remote_host gdbserver - myprogram

However, in the above example, I don't know how to attach myprogram's stdin to input.txt.

Is there something that would do the trick?

Answer 1

gdbserver doesn't read from stdin, so the program it invokes will have unfettered access to stdin. You should be able to do this:

ssh -T remote_host "cd ~/mydir && gdbserver :1234 ~/myprogram" < input.txt

where 1234 is an unused port. Then,

(gdb) target remote remote_host:1234

A drawback with this is that the gdb-gdbserver TCP connection won't be encrypted.