A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 12:00:16 GMT

OK - thanks for the insight.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 11:49:51 GMT

I agree that there is a issue where blogs/tutorials on devzone are not properly maintained. So far we've relied on an "If you publish you maintain it" principle, and although there are cases where this fails, it usually works out fine as long as whoever published the works are still present. Recommendations for improvements on our method of maintainership is more than welcome :)

As to incorporating blogs/tutorials into our official set of supported works, i.e. Datasheets, SDKs, and https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor, this will likely not happen as the bureaucracy/quality required to do so will add so much to the workload of creating a blog/tutorial that there will simply be less of them.

The demand for new supported features is ridiculously high, and we do not have the resources to support everything as well as we'd like. The devzone blog/tutorials and https://github.com/nordicplayground are our way of generating support for features that often do not have a large enough user base to warrant the extra resources required to incorporate them into our "officially supported" domain.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 11:27:18 GMT

That does seem to be the trouble with relying on blog posts as documentation!

I think there needs to be some way for these things to get embodied into the official documentation - with associated maintenance ...

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 11:14:36 GMT

It's an "old" article written by an intern from before we had any real support for SES. I guess we should mark it as deprecated and link to the new repo.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 09:56:05 GMT

Yes, that would be my guess.

But that should be explained in the article - as most Nordic projects are going to use a SoftDevice, so that option will be necessary!

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 08:00:32 GMT

I've found the bug, forgot to include the DEBUG_NRF flag that the hardfault_implementation.c needs in order to override the __WEAK hardfault handler :/

Check out the SDK15.0 branch

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 07:58:51 GMT

I believe that example does not use the SoftDevice and the application's vector table will then start at address 0x00000000. If the J-link driver's vector table entry is 0x00000000 by default then it should work as intended.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Sat, 06 Oct 2018 09:00:26 GMT

[quote userid="13562" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/38438/a-working-demo-of-monitor-mode-debug-mmd-on-sdk-15-please/149072"]In order to execute the Monitor Mode ISR the J-link driver needs to know the vector table.

[/quote]

Yes, that makes sense.

So the question is: why was this command not in the original article?

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/b/blog/posts/segger-embedded-studio-part-2-monitor-mode-debuggi

ie, how does that one get away without it?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 14:09:54 GMT

I appreciate the input, I've raised a couple of 'Issues' in the new repo and will get to it eventually.
Don't hesitate to ask more :)

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 14:03:15 GMT

It would be helpful if Your tutorial explained this!

As noted, the original missed it: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/b/blog/posts/segger-embedded-studio-part-2-monitor-mode-debuggi

And the other tutorial included it, but with no clear explanation: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/b/blog/posts/monitor-mode-debugging-with-j-link-and-gdbeclipse

Hence me banging on trying to get you to clarify it.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 13:54:34 GMT

Yes.
When the J-link driver is configured for MMD mode it will convert a regular 'Halt CPU' command into an 'execute MMD ISR'. In order to execute the Monitor Mode ISR the J-link driver needs to know the vector table.

This is described in the Segger J-Link/J-Trace User Guide chapter 9. Monitor Mode Debugging.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 13:42:59 GMT

and is the SetMonModeVTableAddr option actually necessary ?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 13:22:11 GMT

The application's vector table is at the start of the application's starting address in flash. In a SES project you'll find it in:
Option for project -> Common -> Linker -> Section Placement Macros -> FLASH_START.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 12:13:25 GMT

You're missing the point!

The question was whether the option(s) are necessary - not how to specify them!

And, in the case of the SetMonModeVTableAddr option, what value, exactly, has to be specified?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 11:40:33 GMT

Aah, I forgot to document it.

Open up the example project from the SDK14.2 branch.
Right-click 'Project ble_app_blinky...' and choose 'Edit Options'.
Select 'Debug' from the drop-down menu. (Common, Debug, Release).
Go to Debug -> J-Link -> Additional J-Link Options. Double click to view or edit.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 09:53:40 GMT

[quote userid="13562" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/38438/a-working-demo-of-monitor-mode-debug-mmd-on-sdk-15-please/148977"]I'm not familiar with GDB[/quote]

Neither am I!

I'm not asking about GDB - just SES.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 09:39:33 GMT

I'm not familiar with GDB, but SetMonModeDebug=1 should be place in the projects j-link setting file. The j-link will read this file at the beginning of each j-link dll session and use those settings. I'm assuming that "mon exec" is some sort of keyword to include the following keywords to the j-link settings file.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 08:32:14 GMT

Thanks.

Could you clarify the question (above) about SetMonModeVTableAddr ?

(to be pedantic, note that it's usually called "monitor mode" - rather than "monitoring mode")

EDIT

The SES tutorial also doesn't mention the mon exec SetMonModeDebug=1 command

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

haakonsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 08:17:59 GMT

I've made a new tutorial for SDK14.2, and working on SDK15.

See https://github.com/NordicPlayground/j-link-monitoring-mode-debugging and the SDK14.2 branch.

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

awneil — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 11:22:01 GMT

So I junked the example project, and just put the source files into a known-working SDK 15 Project.

That seems to be working, but This blog has an additional J-Link command, not featured in the above-mentioned blog:

mon exec SetMonModeVTableAddr=0x1f000

Is that also necessary?

I guess it would be needed in an application with a SoftDevice? I guess one would change the 0x1f000 to match the FLASH_START value?

But that's a lot of guessing ...

A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A *working* demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?

RE: A working demo of Monitor Mode Debug (MMD) on SDK 15, please?