[gamemann]

Hi everyone,

I just had a quick question regarding Linux debugging symbols in CS:GO. My server is suffering from a server crash and when inspecting the core dump using GDB, it states `srcds_linux` is missing the debugging symbols.

Reading symbols from srcds_linux...(no debugging symbols found)...done.

This makes the back trace basically useless for engine-specific crashes I believe. For example, here is my back trace:

(gdb) bt full
#0  0xe9ebc381 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#1  0xef82406f in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#2  0xef92accc in sp::Environment::Invoke(sp::PluginContext*, ke::RefPtr<sp::MethodInfo> const&, int*) ()
   from /home/container/csgo/addons/sourcemod/bin/sourcepawn.jit.x86.so
No symbol table info available.
#3  0x000aa278 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#4  0x0001513c in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#5  0x0009513c in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#6  0x0bc56ed8 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.

As you can see, the only function that shows up is from SourceMod. When opening the csgo/bin/server.so file using a program such as IDA, it doesn't include any function names (just sub_xxxx).

It has been a few years since I've ran CS:GO servers on Linux, but I am starting to again due to the Linux limitation being lifted.

If I remember correctly, this wasn't the case years ago. There were debugging symbols included with `srcds_linux` in CS:GO.

Does anybody know if this has changed at some point in the past or if there's anything else I can do to get the debugging symbols? I'm not an expert with debugging in Linux. If you need additional information, please let me know.

P.S. I am used to inspecting core dumps using GDB along with reading the contents of the debug.log file. However, I tried using Accelerator to see if that included additional details but it's not uploading the crash dump correctly. This may be due to the crash I'm experiencing being a loop. I will dig deeper into it later.

Any help is highly appreciated!

Thanks.

[backwards]

They started stripping the symbols a few years ago as mainly the only people using them were cheaters. I'm pretty sure they didn't even mean to leave them in originally. I've only had luck locating the exact issue from crash dumps around 15% of the time. The rest of the time the stack is just showing the must recent events that were called when the crash happens. The actual reason for the crash was some type of memory corruption from invalid hooks that stacked over time and were perfectly fine for 1,000,000's of executions. Tracing it back that far is almost impossible.

[gamemann]

Originally Posted by 1337norway They started stripping the symbols a few years ago as mainly the only people using them were cheaters. I'm pretty sure they didn't even mean to leave them in originally. I've only had luck locating the exact issue from crash dumps around 15% of the time. The rest of the time the stack is just showing the must recent events that were called when the crash happens. The actual reason for the crash was some type of memory corruption from invalid hooks that stacked over time and were perfectly fine for 1,000,000's of executions. Tracing it back that far is almost impossible.

Thank you for the information!

I guess the engine-specific crashes will be hard to narrow down if there are no other logs + debugging symbols.

[Powerlord]

Originally Posted by 1337norway They started stripping the symbols a few years ago as mainly the only people using them were cheaters. I'm pretty sure they didn't even mean to leave them in originally.

That excuse worked back in 2004 when CS:S shipped, but that ship sailed since they left the symbols in every Linux server binary they've released since... until they suddenly decided to strip them from CS:GO (and only CS:GO).

[backwards]

Originally Posted by Powerlord That excuse worked back in 2004 when CS:S shipped, but that ship sailed since they left the symbols in every Linux server binary they've released since... until they suddenly decided to strip them from CS:GO (and only CS:GO).

Well considering counter-strike is one of the most cheated games of all time it's no surprise. It wasn't until global offensive that they started making large grossing from micro transactions and created dedicated servers for competitive play. If you look at any of the cheating forums you will see it's a big issue for new cheaters that have no idea what they are doing without abusing string look ups.

[Powerlord]

Originally Posted by 1337norway Well considering counter-strike is one of the most cheated games of all time it's no surprise.

You've clearly never played Team Fortress 2, which has been free to play for 7 years now had a metric crapton of cheaters since they could just create new free accounts when their old accounts were banned. There was a point when you literally couldn't play on any Valve server without running into blatant cheaters. You pretty much had to run SMAC on any community servers you ran too.

Originally Posted by 1337norway It wasn't until global offensive that they started making large grossing from micro transactions

...again, that started with Team Fortress 2 in September 2010, about 2 years before CS:GO even came out. You'd be surprised how much money people spent at $2.50 USD a pop for that 1% chance of getting an "exceedingly rare" cosmetic item (which was a regular cosmetic item with a particle system attached to it).

Originally Posted by 1337norway and created dedicated servers for competitive play.

This one is actually true. Valve was remarkably slow on the uptake for competitive mode in Team Fortress 2, not launching until it was too late and Blizzard already stole the competitive market from them with Overwatch's competitive mode.

[backwards]

sure buddy, i'm not here to argue about some petty nonsense that's irreverent. The topics question has been answered.

[asherkin]

The anti-cheating argument falls immediately flat when you realise SourceMod still works - and the dedicated people that maintain SM's CS:GO support get a lot fewer motivational dollars than the popular cheat maintainers do. They've always stripped the client builds to get rid of the low-hanging fruit for hobby cheats.

[canadianjeff]

people are gonna cheat regardless they should give out the debugging symbols for crying out loud