Message “Spurious thread death event” in gdb

Question

I am running a C++ multi-threaded linux application in gdb. I get error message "Spurious thread death event". I couldn't find why this message comes. In non-gdb run, I don't see any issue with the run or crash. So I cannot know if this is 'real' issue with application or some issue related to debugging in gdb. Any information regarding this message will be helpful.

Answer 1

Well, I think that this is quite interesting. It seems that gdb keeps track of threads as they are created and destroyed. In this case gdb notices that a thread was destroyed without being aware of the same thread being created. There is a nice article here: http://timetobleed.com/how-do-debuggers-keep-track-of-the-threads-in-your-program/ As far as I see this is an error of the "this should never happen" kind, meaning that this might be a bug in gdb / libthread_db... Could you provide a minimal example that triggers the behaviour?