Building libunwind

Building libunwind

Below versions of Libunwind are available in respective distributions at the time creation of these build instructions:

• RHEL (9.4, 9.6) have 1.6.2
• RHEL 10.0 has 1.8.0
• SLES 15 (SP6, SP7) have 1.5.0

The instructions provided below specify the steps to build libunwind v1.8.3 on Linux on IBM Z for following distributions:

• RHEL (8.10, 9.4, 9.6, 10.0)
• SLES 15 (SP6, SP7)
• Ubuntu (22.04, 24.04, 25.04)

General Notes:

• When following the steps below please use a standard permission user unless otherwise specified.
• A directory /<source_root>/ will be referred to in these instructions, this is a temporary writable directory anywhere you'd like to place it.

1. Build and Install

1.1. Install dependencies

export SOURCE_ROOT=/<source_root>/

• RHEL (8.10, 9.4, 9.6, 10.0)

  sudo yum install -y automake gcc git make libtool gcc-c++

• SLES 15 (SP6, SP7)

  sudo zypper install -y automake gcc git make texinfo libtool pkg-config gcc-c++

• Ubuntu (22.04, 24.04, 25.04)

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install -y automake gcc g++ git make texinfo libtool libltdl-dev pkg-config

1.2. Build and install Libunwind

cd $SOURCE_ROOT
git clone -b v1.8.3 https://github.com/libunwind/libunwind
cd libunwind
perl -pi -e 's/#if defined\(SYS_mmap\) && !defined\(__i386__\)/#if defined(SYS_mmap) && !defined(__i386__) && !defined(__s390x__)/ if $. == 229' include/libunwind_i.h
sed -i '52s/.*/unw_word_t _UPT_ptrauth_insn_mask (unw_addr_space_t as, void *arg)/' src/ptrace/_UPT_ptrauth_insn_mask.c #RHEL 8.10 and SLES 15.X
export CFLAGS="-std=gnu99" #Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 25.04
export CFLAGS="-g -O0" #Ubuntu 22.04 and RHEL 10.0
autoreconf -i
./configure --disable-setjmp #RHEL 10.0
./configure #All except RHEL 10.0
make
sudo make install

1.3. Run Unit and Performance Tests (Optional)

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/libunwind
make check
cd $SOURCE_ROOT/libunwind/tests
make perf

Note: The test-ptrace test case is failing on SLE 15.X, and the run-ptrace-misc test case is failing on RHEL 8.10. Both failures are attributed to kernel limitations and imperfect implementation of the upstream kernal ptrace system call.

References:

• https://github.com/libunwind/libunwind?tab=readme-ov-file#general-build-instructions
• https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/general/libunwind.html