Meaningful stack traces for address sanitizer in GCC

Question 1

This is what is working for me:

Make sure you have installed llvm (including llvm-symbolizer).
Export the following variable
```
export ASAN_SYMBOLIZER_PATH=/usr/bin/llvm-symbolizer
```
(replace with your correct path to the llvm-symbolizer command).
Now run your executable (a.out for now) as
```
ASAN_OPTIONS=symbolize=1 a.out
```

Question 2

=================================================================
==32415== ERROR: AddressSanitizer: heap-buffer-overflow on address 0x6006004b38a0 at pc 0x10b136d5c bp 0x7fff54b8e5d0 sp 0x7fff54b8e5c8
WRITE of size 8 at 0x6006004b38a0 thread T0
    #0 0x10b136d5b (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1000c6d5b)
    #1 0x10b136e0c (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1000c6e0c)
    #2 0x10b138ef5 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1000c8ef5)
    #3 0x10b137a2e (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1000c7a2e)
    #4 0x10b13acf2 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1000cacf2)
    #5 0x10b253647 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001e3647)
    #6 0x10b24ee55 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001dee55)
    #7 0x10b237108 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001c7108)
    #8 0x10b237c17 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001c7c17)
    #9 0x10b2385c9 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001c85c9)
    #10 0x10b23f659 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001cf659)
    #11 0x10b254951 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001e4951)
    #12 0x10b24fbeb (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001dfbeb)
    #13 0x10b23dc38 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001cdc38)
    #14 0x10b229d28 (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001b9d28)
    #15 0x10b229bda (/Users/cls/workspace/NetworKit/./NetworKit-Tests-D+0x1001b9bda)
    #16 0x7fff8b7785fc (/usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib+0x35fc)
    #17 0x2

As an alternative, this is what I have been doing for years under Clang. Pipe your output through asan_symbolize to get the symbols. So you should do something like:

./test.exe 2>&1 | asan_symbolize

I have asan_symbolize in both /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin:

$ find /usr/ -name asan*
/usr/bin/asan_symbolize
/usr/lib/llvm-3.4/lib/clang/3.4/include/sanitizer/asan_interface.h
/usr/local/bin/asan_symbolize.py
/usr/local/lib/clang/3.5.0/include/sanitizer/asan_interface.h

I have two copies because one was installed with Clang via apt-get (/usr/bin/asan_symbolize), and I build Clang from sources on occasion (/usr/local/bin/asan_symbolize.py).

If you have no copies, then I believe you can fetch it from address-sanitizer on Google Code.

Once you start using asan_symbolize, you might encounter a situation where asan_symbolize cannot find the symbols due to a path change (for example, a program or library was copied from its build location to a destination directory). For that, see Specify Symbol Path to asan_symbolize? on the Asan mailing list.

In kcc's answer, he meant to do something like:

./test.exe 2>&1 | sed "s/<old path>/<new path>/g" | asan_symbolize

(I think that's what I had to do when testing Postgres).

Python has a crash course in Clang and its sanitizers at Dynamic Analysis with Clang. It discusses topics like getting stack traces. (I wrote the page for the the Python project to help them add Clang and its sanitizers to its release engineering process. Its a few years old now, but I believe all the information still applies).

Question 3

GCC 4.9.3 above does not require separate symbolizer.

Check How to compile with GCC with static options