Category: Software Debug and Trace

Itโ€™s been a few months since I did any work with my MinnowBoard; time seems to fly by during the summer. In this episode, I pick up where I left off, doing various Yocto builds as I worked towards source-level debug of the Linux kernel. But, Iโ€™m having mysterious build failures, with some of the segmentation fault symptoms I had months ago before I RMAโ€™ed my AMD CPU. Could this be raising its ugly head again?
You can always count on Larry Traylor to crank out useful new content for engineers. This time, heโ€™s updated our Application Note on UEFI Debugging using SourcePoint on Intel Platforms.
In my last article, I outlined a short embedded JTAG-based โ€˜Cโ€™ routine to dump machine check errors in the event of a system crash or hang. In todayโ€™s blog, I look at this in the larger context of diagnosing the root cause of system wedges, and what embedded ITP techniques can be used to gather as much forensics data as possible.
System Management Mode (SMM) is an x86 operating mode in which all normal execution, including the operatingย system, is suspended. SMM is of interest to cybersecurity specialists (black hat and white hat) because it can also be abused to run high-privilegedย rootkits. This week, I decided to use SourcePoint to explore some of its mysteries.
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