[Qt-creator] No Debugging on WinXP with Comodo Firewall

[Sebastian Fischer]

It seems my reply hasn't made it on the mailing list for some reason
(if it has and I just missed it somehow please let me know, and sorry
for reposting it)

So here it is again:
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Hello again

>> The  only problem so far is, that I can't debug with it at all as long
>> as  the COMODO Firewall's 'Defense+' is active. This installs a system
>> hook  via  C:\WINDOWS\system32\guard32.dll  which is invoked everytime
>> any  application  is  launched. This seems to confuse either gdb or Qt
>> Creator  so that when I want to start debugging it halts in that file.
>> I  can't  contine,  step over/out or do anything that seems to have an
>> effect.
> It's interesting. The "fear" of firewall interaction was the reason to
> use QLocalSocket and not QTcpSocket for interaction with the debugged
> program. Looks like your firewall even tries to block this... Is there
> no way to specify exceptions?
Even though this is part of the firewall it's not related to network
activities. It has become customary for firewalls to also check local
application behaviour like which registry keys it tries to modify,
if it tries to access protected files and so on. For this the hook is
needed to have all applications launched through that guard32.dll
making it able to see all activities before they happen. For some
reason the debugger halts in it (the executeable to be debugged isn't
even running at that point near as I can tell) and gets hung up
somehow.
This is also the reason I can't specify an exception, the point at
which anything like an exception is checked isn't even reached yet. Of
course I've set the executable to be debugged as 'trusted' and allowed
everything (I've written it, so it won't do anything I won't like ;) ).

> You could try to switch off "Debug -> Use Custom Display for Qt Objects"
> and "Build&Run ->> Build Settings -> Link Debugging Helper" and see if
> this makes a difference.
Will do that the next time I reboot (currently I still have Defense+
disabled) and report what happens.

Bye,
Sebastian Fischer