Symbol reference strangeness

[Bruce Ashfield <Bruce dot Ashfield at seawaynetworks dot com>]

Hi all,

I'm trying to determine what's happening with the symbols for
a project I'm working one. I've completed a move from a gcc-3.0
to a gcc-3.2 based toolchain and I've also upgraded to gdb-5.3.
Ever since the switch over I've been seeing odd problems accessings
variables and other symbols in the generated images.

I've gone over the compile flags and gdb options without much 
success. I just finished trying the latest CVS snapshot of gdb
without any more luck. I'm hoping someone can slap me and point
me in the right direction. 

The most similar problems I've found to what I'm seeing on the
mailing list archives are:

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb/2002-12/msg00111.html
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/bug-gdb/2000-09/msg00012.html

Which fairly closely describe what I've been seeing. So I'm 
now making sure that everything is being compiled with -gdwarf-2,
but that is only partially helping the problem, now I can see
some variables but not others, where before loading the same
symbol file multiple times would eventually get me at some 
variables.

The following capture will best describe what I'm seeing.

(gdb) p /x debugLevel
$1 = 0xfffffff
(gdb) p sealKernelMaxConsecutiveCt_g 
$3 = 3
(gdb) p /x debugLevel 
Cannot access memory at address 0x40249fc0

There are other ways of making this happen, but this is the
most simple. Very strange and I'm running out of things to try,
any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

Here are some point form technical details:

compiler: 3.2.2 (powerpc cross compiler, host linux)
gdb: 5.3 and latest March CVS snapshot
compiling with: -gdwarf-2 in debug mode.

Cheers,

Bruce Ashfield




-- 
Bruce Ashfield         | "Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for
                       |  chaos and madness await thee at its end."
                       |       - unknown