Reverse Engineering

GDBFrontend – An Easy, Flexible And Extensionable GUI Debugger

May 10, 2020
4 Min Read
GDBFrontend - An Easy, Flexible And Extensionable GUI Debugger

[sc name=”ad_1″]

GDBFrontend is an easy, flexible and extensionable gui debugger.

Installing

Deb Package (Debian / Ubuntu / KDE Neon)
You can install GDBFrontend via deb package for Debian-based distributions.
You can install it from following commands:

echo "deb [trusted=yes] https://oguzhaneroglu.com/deb/ ./" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gdbfrontend

After installing with APT, you will get updates for new releases on APT upgrade.
You can get upgrades with following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade gdbfrontend

and you can run it:

gdbfrontend

Running From GIT
You can download latest source and run it.

Requirements

  • GDB => 8.2 (with python3)
  • python3
  • tmux

You can run gdb-frontend with following commands:

git clone https://github.com/rohanrhu/gdb-frontend.git gdb-frontend
cd gdb-frontend
./gdbfrontend

and you can open it with:

http://127.0.0.1:5551/terminal/

or without terminal:

http://127.0.0.1:5551/

You can open GDB shell with the command:

tmux a -t gdb-frontend

Flatpak
Flatpak package is a TODO.

./gdbfrontend

$ gdbfrontend --help
GDBFrontend is a easy, flexible and extensionable gui debugger.

Options:
--help, -h: Shows this help message.
--version, -v: Shows version.
--gdb-executable=PATH, -g PATH: Specifies GDB executable path (Default is "gdb" command on PATH environment variable.)
--tmux-executable=PATH, -tmux PATH: Specifies Tmux executable path (Default is "tmux" command on PATH environment variable.)
--terminal-id=NAME, -t NAME: Specifies tmux terminal identifier name (Default is "gdb-frontend".)
--listen=IP, -l IP: Specifies listen address for HTTP and WS servers.
--port=PORT, -p PORT: Specifies port range for three ports to (Gotty: PORT, HTTP: PORT+1, WS: PORT+2).
--http-port=PORT: Specifies HTTP server port.
--server-port=PORT: Specifies WS server port.
--gotty-port=PORT: Specifies Gotty server port.
--readonly, -r: Makes code editor readonly. (Notice: This option is not related to security.)
--verbose, -V: Enables verbose output.

Options

--help, -h
Shows help text.

--version, -v
Shows version.

--gdb-executable=PATH, -g PATH
You can specify GDB executable path like gdbfrontend --gdb-executable=/path/to/gdb. (Optional)

--tmux-executable=PATH, -tmux PATH
You can specify Tmux executable path like gdbfrontend --tmux-executable=/path/to/tmux. (Optional)

--terminal-id=PATH, -t PATH
You can specify Tmux terminal id like gdbfrontend --terminal-id=terminal-name. (Default: gdb-frontend)

--listen=IP, -l IP
Specifies listen address for HTTP and WS servers.

--port=PORT, -p PORT
Specifies port range for three ports to (Gotty: PORT, HTTP: PORT+1, WS: PORT+2).

--http-port=PORT
Specifies HTTP server port.

--server-port=PORT
Specifies WS server port.

--gotty-port=PORT
Specifies Gotty server port.

--readonly, -r
Makes code editor readonly. (Notice: This option is not related to security.)

--verbose, -v
Enables verbose output.

Troubleshooting

Zombie Processes
Sometimes GDB and gdb-frontend may not be closed correctly. In this case, you can terminate gdb-frontend shell.

tmux kill-session -t gdb-frontend

GDB-Related Issues and Tips

  • GDB does not give sources of linked object until stepping a line that calls a function from the linked object once. You can add break point a line and step it once, then you will see sources from linked object hereafter during the session.

Windows
In fact, gdb-frontend is able to run on Windows but there are some serious issues in the GDB’s Windows version those avoid using gdb-frontend on Windows. Of course you can use gdb-frontend on WSL if you are using Windows 10.

Issues about Windows-GDB

  • GDB’s main-thread is being blocked during running process. (gdb-frontend has an interrupting mechanism to fixing this but it is not enough yet.)
  • Windows-GDB’s prompt is being blocked during running process and there are some issues about interrupting the application.
  • Current release of Windows-GDB contains Python2. New GDB 9 have Python3 but it is not released yet.

WSL
You can use gdb-frontend on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

Documentation
Documentation is TODO yet.

API Documentation
API Documentation is TODO yet.

Plugin Development
You can read the Plugin Development Tutorial.

Contributing
You can contribute with commiting to project or developing a plugin. All commits are welcome.

 


[sc name=”ad-in-article”]

Tags