How to use the addr2line command in Linux?

Question

I am trying to use addr2line command in Unix but everytime it is giving the same output as ??:0. I am giving command as addr2line -e a.out 0x4005BDC . I got this address while running this a.out executable with valgrind tool to find the memory leakage. I also compiled the source code with -g option.

Answer 1

That's exactly how you use it. There is a possibility that the address you have does not correspond to something directly in your source code though.

For example:

$ cat t.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    printf("hello\n");
    return 0;
}
$ gcc -g t.c
$ addr2line -e a.out 0x400534
/tmp/t.c:3
$ addr2line -e a.out 0x400550
??:0

0x400534 is the address of main in my case. 0x400408 is also a valid function address in a.out, but it's a piece of code generated/imported by GCC, that has no debug info. (In this case, __libc_csu_init. You can see the layout of your executable with readelf -a your_exe.)

Other times when addr2line will fail is if you're including a library that has no debug information.

Answer 2

You can also use gdb instead of addr2line to examine memory address. Load executable file in gdb and print the name of a symbol which is stored at the address. 16 Examining the Symbol Table.

(gdb) info symbol 0x4005BDC 

Answer 3

Try adding the -f option to show the function names :

addr2line -f -e a.out 0x4005BDC

Answer 4

You need to specify an offset to addr2line, not a virtual address (VA). Presumably if you had address space randomization turned off, you could use a full VA, but in most modern OSes, address spaces are randomized for a new process.

Given the VA 0x4005BDC by valgrind, find the base address of your process or library in memory. Do this by examining the /proc/<PID>/maps file while your program is running. The line of interest is the text segment of your process, which is identifiable by the permissions r-xp and the name of your program or library.

Let's say that the base VA is 0x0x4005000. Then you would find the difference between the valgrind supplied VA and the base VA: 0xbdc. Then, supply that to add2line:

addr2line -e a.out -j .text 0xbdc

And see if that gets you your line number.