#Double panic mac os x vmware install#

Copy this image up to the target VM, and install the debug kernel as per the instructions in the readme file: macvm$ sudo -s In this case IвЂ™m using Kernel Debug Kit 10.7.3 build 11D50. Download the appropriate version for the target kernel youвЂ™re debugging in the VM (not necessarily the same as the kernel version on your host debugger machine). The debug kits used to live here, but it seems Apple decided they only want ADC members to be able to access them, so now theyвЂ™re here (requires ADC login). This contains a version of the XNU kernel built with the DEBUG flag set, which includes the debug stubs for KDP and ddb, and a second DEBUG version with a full symbol table to load in GDB so we can use breakpoints on symbol names and not go insane. Once weвЂ™ve got our VM installed, we need to install the Kernel Debug Kit. Generally itвЂ™s not a problem, but itвЂ™s annoying to roll back and much easier to use a VMware snapshot.

#Double panic mac os x vmware mac os x#

So, the first step of the process is: install yourself a Mac OS X VM as per the VMware documentation.Д®dit 13 July 2013: Once youвЂ™re done itвЂ™s probably a good idea to take a snapshot of your VM in case there are problems installing the debug kernel. VMware Fusion 4 introduced the ability to install Mac OS X 10.7 into a VM without any dodgy hacks, just by choosing the Install Mac OS X Lion.app bundle as the installation disc. Prior to this, only the вЂњserverвЂќ version of Mac OS X was allowed to be virtualised, and VMware вЂpreventedвЂ™ the client version from being installed through some hardcoded logic in vmware-vmx (which some sneaky hackers patched). We donвЂ™t really want to use two physical machines for debugging, because who the hell uses physical boxes these days when VMs will do the job? With the release of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), Apple changed the EULA to allow running virtualised instances of Lion on top of an instance running on bare metal. Apple suggests in the Kernel Programming Guide that you are better off using gdb for most tasks, so thatвЂ™s what weвЂ™ll do. ddb can be used to debug the running kernel from the target machine itself, but is pretty low-level and arcane.

KDP is implemented in-kernel by an instance of IOKernelDebugger, and allows you to connect to the debug stub from an instance of gdb (AppleвЂ™s outdated fork only AFAIK) running on another machine connected via FireWire or Ethernet. Apple has long provided methods for kernel debugging via the Kernel Debugger Protocol (KDP), along with ddb, the in-kernel serial debugger.

#Double panic mac os x vmware how to#

printf()-debugging is the worst, and being in kernel-land, it might not be immediately obvious how to go about debugging your (or other peopleвЂ™s) code. Tags: mac os x, kernel, debugging, vmware, gdbД®dit 13 July 2013: IвЂ™ve made a couple of updates to this post to clarify a couple of things and resolve issues people have had.ДЇG! did a great write up here on how to set up two-machine debugging with VMware on Leopard a couple of years ago, but as a few things have changed since then and I will probably refer to this topic in future posts I thought it was worth revisiting.Дebugging kernel extensions can be a bit of a pain. Debugging the Mac OS X kernel with VMware and GDB