Debugging shared libraries remotely with gdb/gdbserver

Question

My question is about remote debugging an application on an embedded arm processor using gdb/gdbserver.

I can debug the application itself, but the application dynamically links to a shared library which implements an in house communications protocol. I want to be able to set breakpoints within the shared library functions so try to figure out some device discovery problems.

I have made sure that the library is compiled with debug symbols and is loaded by gdb on the host side, I can list functions within the library and even set the breakpoints but as soon as I try to run the application I get an error message to the effect of:

Cannot insert breakpoint X.
Error accessing memory address : Input/output error.

where X is the breakpoint number in gdb and is an address far to small to be valid.
I am using the new library on both the target and the host machine, but via mount -o bind newlib oldlib on the target from an nfs mount.
Does anyone have an idea about what could be wrong? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I see this question is from 2009, but the current answers are out-of-date, so here's an update:

@Employed Russian suggested that you must use stop-on-solib-event. This is no longer true; NDK r8d supports pending breakpoints in yet-to-be-loaded solibs.

@Brent Piddy says that stop-on-solib-event doesn't work with gdbserver. This is also no longer true since at least r8c. My company has a product that relies on this NDK behavior from GDB, we would be in big trouble without it.