I'm having problems getting gdb to pause execution flow under NetBeans. The pause button doesn't appear to work at all. From this answer, I suspect it may be a problem with what text gdb is actually receiving as input (I'm under Windows/Mingw32 using IIRC msys bash). But this is just a guess.
I don't know where to view what is happening with gdb (input or output). I see a few mentions of it in the debugger console but not sure if that counts for anything. I'd post that log here but it is rather large.