How to get a stack trace for C++ using gcc with line number information?

So you want a stand-alone function that prints a stack trace with all of the features that gdb stack traces have and that doesn't terminate your application. The answer is to automate the launch of gdb in a non-interactive mode to perform just the tasks that you want.

This is done by executing gdb in a child process, using fork(), and scripting it to display a stack-trace while your application waits for it to complete. This can be performed without the use of a core-dump and without aborting the application. I learned how to do this from looking at this question: How it's better to invoke gdb from program to print it's stacktrace?

The example posted with that question didn't work for me exactly as written, so here's my "fixed" version (I ran this on Ubuntu 9.04).

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/prctl.h>

void print_trace() {
    char pid_buf[30];
    sprintf(pid_buf, "%d", getpid());
    char name_buf[512];
    name_buf[readlink("/proc/self/exe", name_buf, 511)]=0;
    prctl(PR_SET_PTRACER, PR_SET_PTRACER_ANY, 0, 0, 0);
    int child_pid = fork();
    if (!child_pid) {
        dup2(2,1); // redirect output to stderr - edit: unnecessary?
        execl("/usr/bin/gdb", "gdb", "--batch", "-n", "-ex", "thread", "-ex", "bt", name_buf, pid_buf, NULL);
        abort(); /* If gdb failed to start */
    } else {
        waitpid(child_pid,NULL,0);
    }
}

As shown in the referenced question, gdb provides additional options that you could use. For example, using "bt full" instead of "bt" produces an even more detailed report (local variables are included in the output). The manpages for gdb are kind of light, but complete documentation is available here.

Since this is based on gdb, the output includes demangled names, line-numbers, function arguments, and optionally even local variables. Also, gdb is thread-aware, so you should be able to extract some thread-specific metadata.

Here's an example of the kind of stack traces that I see with this method.

0x00007f97e1fc2925 in waitpid () from /lib/libc.so.6
[Current thread is 0 (process 15573)]
#0  0x00007f97e1fc2925 in waitpid () from /lib/libc.so.6
#1  0x0000000000400bd5 in print_trace () at ./demo3b.cpp:496
2  0x0000000000400c09 in recursive (i=2) at ./demo3b.cpp:636
3  0x0000000000400c1a in recursive (i=1) at ./demo3b.cpp:646
4  0x0000000000400c1a in recursive (i=0) at ./demo3b.cpp:646
5  0x0000000000400c46 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffe3b2b5b8) at ./demo3b.cpp:70

Note: I found this to be incompatible with the use of valgrind (probably due to Valgrind's use of a virtual machine). It also doesn't work when you are running the program inside of a gdb session (can't apply a second instance of "ptrace" to a process).

Not too long ago I answered a similar question. You should take a look at the source code available on method #4, which also prints line numbers and filenames.

• Method #4:

A small improvement I've done on method #3 to print line numbers. This could be copied to work on method #2 also.

Basically, it uses addr2line to convert addresses into file names and line numbers.

The source code below prints line numbers for all local functions. If a function from another library is called, you might see a couple of ??:0 instead of file names.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <execinfo.h>

void bt_sighandler(int sig, struct sigcontext ctx) {

  void *trace[16];
  char **messages = (char **)NULL;
  int i, trace_size = 0;

  if (sig == SIGSEGV)
    printf("Got signal %d, faulty address is %p, "
           "from %p\n", sig, ctx.cr2, ctx.eip);
  else
    printf("Got signal %d\n", sig);

  trace_size = backtrace(trace, 16);
  /* overwrite sigaction with caller's address */
  trace[1] = (void *)ctx.eip;
  messages = backtrace_symbols(trace, trace_size);
  /* skip first stack frame (points here) */
  printf("[bt] Execution path:\n");
  for (i=1; i<trace_size; ++i)
  {
    printf("[bt] #%d %s\n", i, messages[i]);

    /* find first occurence of '(' or ' ' in message[i] and assume
     * everything before that is the file name. (Don't go beyond 0 though
     * (string terminator)*/
    size_t p = 0;
    while(messages[i][p] != '(' && messages[i][p] != ' '
            && messages[i][p] != 0)
        ++p;

    char syscom[256];
    sprintf(syscom,"addr2line %p -e %.*s", trace[i], p, messages[i]);
        //last parameter is the file name of the symbol
    system(syscom);
  }

  exit(0);
}


int func_a(int a, char b) {

  char *p = (char *)0xdeadbeef;

  a = a + b;
  *p = 10;  /* CRASH here!! */

  return 2*a;
}


int func_b() {

  int res, a = 5;

  res = 5 + func_a(a, 't');

  return res;
}


int main() {

  /* Install our signal handler */
  struct sigaction sa;

  sa.sa_handler = (void *)bt_sighandler;
  sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask);
  sa.sa_flags = SA_RESTART;

  sigaction(SIGSEGV, &sa, NULL);
  sigaction(SIGUSR1, &sa, NULL);
  /* ... add any other signal here */

  /* Do something */
  printf("%d\n", func_b());
}

This code should be compiled as: gcc sighandler.c -o sighandler -rdynamic

The program outputs:

Got signal 11, faulty address is 0xdeadbeef, from 0x8048975
[bt] Execution path:
[bt] #1 ./sighandler(func_a+0x1d) [0x8048975]
/home/karl/workspace/stacktrace/sighandler.c:44
[bt] #2 ./sighandler(func_b+0x20) [0x804899f]
/home/karl/workspace/stacktrace/sighandler.c:54
[bt] #3 ./sighandler(main+0x6c) [0x8048a16]
/home/karl/workspace/stacktrace/sighandler.c:74
[bt] #4 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe6) [0x3fdbd6]
??:0
[bt] #5 ./sighandler() [0x8048781]
??:0