[Zope] When "Debug Spinning Zope" doesn't work

[Paul Winkler]

It used to be that on the rare occasions that Zope hung, I could
use the recipe at http://zopelabs.com/cookbook/1073504990
to diagnose the problem (usually my own code was at fault). But, what
does it mean when I get nothing at all from "info threads" in gdb?  

I get this on two different systems:

system A:
python2.3.5
zope 2.7.7
gdb 5.2-2

system B:
python 2.3.4
zope 2.7.3
gdb 5.2-2


Lately this seems to happen regardless of whether
Zope is responsive or not. e.g.:

$ cat Z2.pid
$ cat /zope/ZopeInstanceHome/var/Z2.pid 
24161
$ sudo gdb python2.3
Password:
GNU gdb Red Hat Linux (5.2-2)
Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you
are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain
conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for
details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"...
(gdb) attach 24161
Attaching to program: /usr/local/bin/python2.3, process 24161
Reading symbols from /lib/libpthread.so.0...done.

(snip copious output)

Reading symbols from
/usr/local/lib/python2.3/lib-dynload/itertools.so...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/local/lib/python2.3/lib-dynload/itertools.so
0x080775af in PyDict_GetItem (op=0x44d16934, key=0x401ae020)
    at Objects/dictobject.c:498
498             return (mp->ma_lookup)(mp, key, hash)->me_value;
(gdb) info threads
{gdb)


That's it, nothing.  It used to work for me.
Any clues?


-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com