Emacs gdb - display arrow when debugging assembly

Question

I'm trying to debug an assembly program using gdb and Emacs. My problem is that, when I try to debug step-by-step, it doesn't show a pointer arrow at the current executing line. The code I'm trying to debug is:

SECTION .data               ; Section containing initialised data

    EatMsg: db "Eat at Joe's!",10
    EatLen: equ $-EatMsg    

SECTION .bss            ; Section containing uninitialized data 

SECTION .text           ; Section containing code

global  _start          ; Linker needs this to find the entry point!

_start:
    nop         ; This no-op keeps gdb happy...
    mov eax,4       ; Specify sys_write call
    mov ebx,1       ; Specify File Descriptor 1: Standard Output
    mov ecx,EatMsg      ; Pass offset of the message
    mov edx,EatLen      ; Pass the length of the message
    int 80H         ; Make kernel call

    MOV eax,1       ; Code for Exit Syscall
    mov ebx,0       ; Return a code of zero 
    int 80H         ; Make kernel call

and I'm compiling with these lines:

    nasm -f elf -g -F stabs eatsyscall.asm -l eatsyscall.lst
    ld -melf_i386 -o eatsyscall eatsyscall.o

What I see in Emacs is that. In this screenshot I'm currently executing the line after the breakpoint and no pointer to that line appears. Is it possible to have one?

Answer 1

first of all, i hope you are still looking for the solution, it has been 2 years ! if you are, then try coaxing nasm to generate debugging information with DWARF instead of STAB i.e the following

nasm -f elf -g -F dwarf eatsyscall.asm ...

that seems to work for me (TM)

Answer 2

Try to download nasm2.5 or the latest available, it should work