[Gdb] "Cannot set breakpoint -2" error message

[Clark L. Coleman]

There is a somewhat common problem with gdb installations that has no
solution that I could find. Specifically, any attempt to run an
executable (even the simplest hello world executable) under gdb
produces the error message:

Cannot set breakpoint -2

This occurs with no attempt to set a breakpoint or do anything in gdb
except the "run" command.

If you put the following into Google:

gdb "cannot set breakpoint -2"

you will get a huge list of hits. All of these are message board
inquiries for particular Linux variants or particular application
packages. The only thing they have in common is that the user getting
the error message was using gdb on a Unix OS of some sort. The replies
to their queries contain various speculations that relate to the
particular environment being used, but none are helpful. Most queries
have no replies at all.

In my case, I am running Gentoo Linux, kernel 2.6.13-4, on a MIPS
R12000 CPU, with executables compiled as "gcc -g" using gcc 3.4.6, and
the problem happens with gdb 6.4, gdb 6.3, gdb 6.1.1, gdb 6.1, and
gdb 6.0. None of the Google hits had anything to do with MIPS
processors or Gentoo Linux, so I would not worry about that.

It seems that this problem occurs often enough that the gdb community
needs to post an FAQ with the solution, if anyone knows one.

Thanks for any help.

Clark Coleman
University of Virginia
Computer Science Department