Robert Burns pointed me to a patch that fixed this problem (Thanks, Bob!). The patch is available at http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=466144676&fmt=text The problem this fixed was the following: (gdb) target exec ./helloworld (gdb) run Starting program: ./helloworld /proc/7656/ctl: Permission denied /proc/7656/status: No such file or directory. can't open process file (gdb) $