AIX 4.3.3: gdb 4.16 cannot understand archive format

[Clark L. Coleman]

I am running the following old gdb:

gdb --version
GDB 4.16 (rs6000-ibm-aix3.2.5), Copyright 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.


on an IBM PowerPC 604e CPU under AIX 4.3.3. When I try to debug an
executable built with gcc 2.95.2:

gcc -v
Reading specs from 
/gnu/gcc-2.95.2/lib/gcc-lib/powerpc-ibm-aix4.3.2.0/2.95.2/specs
gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)

I get the following message:

"/usr/lpp/pmtoolkit/lib/libpmapi.a": not in executable format: File
format not recognized.

This happens when I execute the "run" command after setting a single
breakpoint in my own code (not the archive).

The executable statically links together numerous *.o files of my own,
plus two archives. When I execute the "file" command on the two
archives, the one that causes no problems is just listed as an
archive, while the one that causes the problem is listed as:

archive (big format)

My questions are:

1) Does anyone know for sure what causes this problem?

2) Will upgrading to a newer version of gdb fix this? (Probably cannot
get sysadmins to upgrade "just to see if it helps" unless there is a
solid reason to believe that it will help).

3) Any idea what "big format" means as output from the 'file' command?

Thanks for any info.

Clark Coleman