Installing debuginfo packages in RHEL and Fedora

Many diagnostic and debugging utilities, including crash, SystemTap, oprofile, and gdb, require the "debuginfo" version of a package to be fully functional. For example, to analyze a kernel vmcore using crash, the kernel-debuginfo package must be installed. To analyze a program core file using gdb, the debuginfo package corresponding to the program that created the core file must first be installed.

debuginfo-install

debuginfo-install is used to install the debuginfo version of packages and their dependencies, based on the name of the non-debug package.

Examples

To install all the packages for debugging the kernel:

1) # debuginfo-install kernel

--> Running transaction check
---> Package kernel-debuginfo.x86_64 0:3.6.11-4.fc16 will be installed
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 = 3.6.11-4.fc16 for package: kernel-debuginfo-3.6.11-4.fc16.x86_64
---> Package yum-plugin-auto-update-debug-info.noarch 0:1.1.31-2.fc16 will be installed
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64.x86_64 0:3.6.11-4.fc16 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

====================================================================================================================================
 Package                                        Arch                Version                    Repository                      Size
====================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 kernel-debuginfo                               x86_64              3.6.11-4.fc16              updates-debuginfo              284 M
 yum-plugin-auto-update-debug-info              noarch              1.1.31-2.fc16              fedora                          18 k
Installing for dependencies:
 kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64                 x86_64              3.6.11-4.fc16              updates-debuginfo               41 M

Transaction Summary
====================================================================================================================================
Install  2 Packages (+1 Dependent package)

Total download size: 325 M
Installed size: 1.9 G
Is this ok [y/N]:

2) To install the package for debugging the SSHD
# debuginfo-install openssh-server