GDB is a complex program. There is an excellent Info manual (`info gdb'), which is available in the separate gdb-doc package. gdb-doc is not part of Debian main; it is available in the non-free distribution (because it is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License). GDB's documentation is also available online. Documentation from the most recent release branch may be found at: http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb.html There are also a number of books and tutorials devoted to GDB. One particularly useful guide is Peter Jay Salzman's, at: http://www.dirac.org/linux/gdb/