Debugging Cortex-M with ARM-GDB and ST-Link

Downloading and Installing ST-Link utilities

• Download ST-Link source from Github.
• Install the necessary requirements with sudo apt install libusb-1.0.0-dev on Debain systems. Use equivalent command on other distributions.
• cd st-link && make
• sudo cp build/Debug/st-* /usr/local/bin or sudo cp build/Release/st-* /usr/local/bin
• sudo cp /etc/udev/rules,d/49-stlinkv* /etc/udev/rules.d/
• sudo udevadm control --reload

Using ST-Link

Reading flash

• st-flash --reset read content_flash.bin 0x8000000 0x20000

Debugging

• Run the st-link utility by $ st-util if it is already present in the path. This step sets up the debugging server.
• Once the server is set up, run $ arm-none-eabi-gdb file.elf and run the following command the GDB commandline > target extended-remote :4242 (if the port selected by the previous step is 4242). Alternatively, this could also be done, arm-none-eabi-gdb --eval-command="target remote localhost:4242" file.elf
• In the gdb command line, enter > load file.elf and insert a breakpoint in main by break main.

Writing to flash

• st-link write file.bin 0x8000000

Detecting the target

• st-info --probe

Reference

Written on August 17, 2019