I've got a binary installed on my system, and would like to look at the disassembly of a given function. Preferrably using objdump
, but other solutions would be acceptable as well.
From this questions I've learned that I might be able to disassemble part of the code if I only know the boundary addresses. From this answer I've learned how to turn my split debug symbols back into a single file.
But even operating on that single file, and even disassembling all the code (i.e. without start or stop address, but plain -d
parameter to objdump
), I still don't see that symbol anywhere. Which makes sense insofar as the function in question is static, so it isn't exported. Nevertheless, valgrind
will report the function name, so it has to be stored somewhere.
Looking at the details of the debug sections, I find that name mentioned in the .debug_str
section, but I don't know a tool which can turn this into an address range.
I would suggest using gdb as the simplest approach. You can even do it as a one-liner, like:
gdb -batch -ex 'file /bin/ls' -ex 'disassemble main'
gdb disassemble/rs
to show source and raw bytes as well
With this format, it gets really close to objdump -S
output:
gdb -batch -ex "file $EXECUTABLE" -ex "disassemble/rs $FUNCTION"
a.c:
#include <assert.h>
int myfunc(int i) {
i = i + 2;
i = i * 2;
return i;
}
int main(void) {
assert(myfunc(1) == 6);
assert(myfunc(2) == 8);
return 0;
}
Compile and disassemble
gcc -std=c99 -O0 -g a.c
gdb -batch -ex 'file a.out' -ex "disassemble/rs myfunc"
Disassembly:
Dump of assembler code for function main:
a.c:
1 int main(void) {
0x00000000004004d6 <+0>: 55 push %rbp
0x00000000004004d7 <+1>: 48 89 e5 mov %rsp,%rbp
2 int i;
3 i = 0;
0x00000000004004da <+4>: c7 45 fc 00 00 00 00 movl $0x0,-0x4(%rbp)
4 i = i + 2;
0x00000000004004e1 <+11>: 83 45 fc 02 addl $0x2,-0x4(%rbp)
5 i = i * 2;
0x00000000004004e5 <+15>: d1 65 fc shll -0x4(%rbp)
6 return 0;
0x00000000004004e8 <+18>: b8 00 00 00 00 mov $0x0,%eax
7 }
0x00000000004004ed <+23>: 5d pop %rbp
0x00000000004004ee <+24>: c3 retq
End of assembler dump.
Tested on Ubuntu 16.04, GDB 7.11.1.
objdump + awk workarounds
Print the paragraph as mentioned at: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/82944/how-to-grep-for-text-in-a-file-and-display-the-paragraph-that-has-the-text
objdump -d a.out | awk -v RS= '/^[[:xdigit:]]+ <FUNCTION>/'
e.g.:
objdump -d a.out | awk -v RS= '/^[[:xdigit:]]+ <myfunc>/'
gives just:
000000000000064a <myfunc>:
64a: 55 push %rbp
64b: 48 89 e5 mov %rsp,%rbp
64e: 89 7d fc mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
651: 83 45 fc 02 addl $0x2,-0x4(%rbp)
655: d1 65 fc shll -0x4(%rbp)
658: 8b 45 fc mov -0x4(%rbp),%eax
65b: 5d pop %rbp
65c: c3 retq
When using -S
, I don't think there is a fail-proof way, as the code comments could contain any possible sequence... But the following works almost all the time:
objdump -S a.out | awk '/^[[:xdigit:]]+ <FUNCTION>:$/{flag=1;next}/^[[:xdigit:]]+ <.*>:$/{flag=0}flag'
adapted from: How to select lines between two marker patterns which may occur multiple times with awk/sed
Mailing list replies
There is a 2010 thread on the mailing list which says it is not possible: https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2010-04/msg00445.html
Besides the gdb
workaround proposed by Tom, they also comment on another (worse) workaround of compiling with -ffunction-section
which puts one function per section and then dumping the section.
Nicolas Clifton gave it a WONTFIX https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2015-07/msg00004.html , likely because the GDB workaround covers that use case.
Disassemble One Single Function using Objdump
I have two solutions:
1. Commandline Based
This method works perfectly and is also very short. I use objdump with -d option and pipe it to awk. The disassembled output looks like
000000000000068a <main>:
68a: 55 push %rbp
68b: 48 89 e5 mov %rsp,%rbp
68e: 48 83 ec 20 sub $0x20,%rsp
A section or function is seperated by an empty line. Hence changing the FS (Field Seperator) to newline and the RS (Record Seperator) to twice newline let you easily search for your recommended function, since it is simply to find within the $1 field!
objdump -d name_of_your_obj_file | awk -F"\n" -v RS="\n\n" '$1 ~ /main/'
Of course you can replace main to any function you want to be output.
2. Bash Script
I have written a small bash script for this issue. Simply copy it and save it as e.g. dasm file.
#!/bin/bash
# Author: abu
# Description: puts disassembled objectfile to std-out
if [ $# = 2 ]; then
sstrg="^[[:xdigit:]]{2,}+.*<$2>:$"
objdump -d $1 | awk -F"\n" -v RS="\n\n" '$1 ~ /'"$sstrg"'/'
elif [ $# = 1 ]; then
objdump -d $1 | awk -F"\n" -v RS="\n\n" '{ print $1 }'
else
echo "You have to add argument(s)"
echo "Usage: "$0 " arg1 arg2"
echo "Description: print disassembled label to std-out"
echo " arg1: name of object file"
echo " arg2: name of function to be disassembled"
echo " "$0 " arg1 ... print labels and their rel. addresses"
fi
Change the x-access and invoke it with e.g.:
chmod +x dasm
./dasm test main
This is much faster than invoking gdb with a script. Beside the way using objdump will not load the libraries into memory and is therefore safer!
Vitaly Fadeev programmed the autocompletion to this script, which is really a nice feature and speeds up typing.
The script can be found here.
This works just like the gdb solution (in that that it shifts the offsets towards zero) except that it's not laggy (gets the job done in about 5ms on my PC whereas the gdb solution takes about 150ms):
objdump_func:
#!/bin/sh
# $1 -- function name; rest -- object files
fn=$1; shift 1
exec objdump -d "$@" |
awk " /^[[:xdigit:]].*<$fn>/,/^\$/ { print \$0 }" |
awk -F: -F' ' 'NR==1 { offset=strtonum("0x"$1); print $0; }
NR!=1 { split($0,a,":"); rhs=a[2]; n=strtonum("0x"$1); $1=sprintf("%x", n-offset); printf "%4s:%s\n", $1,rhs }'
To simplify the usage of awk for parsing objdump's output relative to other answers:
objdump -d filename | sed '/<functionName>:/,/^$/!d'
Bash completion for ./dasm
Complete symbol names to this solution (D lang version):
- By typing
dasm test
and then pressing TabTab, you will get a list of all functions.
- By typing
dasm test m
and then pressing TabTab all functions starting with m will be shown, or in case only one function exists, it will be autocompleted.
File /etc/bash_completion.d/dasm
:
# bash completion for dasm
_dasm()
{
local cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
if [[ $COMP_CWORD -eq 1 ]] ; then
# files
COMPREPLY=( $( command ls *.o -F 2>/dev/null | grep "^$cur" ) )
elif [[ $COMP_CWORD -eq 2 ]] ; then
# functions
OBJFILE=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}
COMPREPLY=( $( command nm --demangle=dlang $OBJFILE | grep " W " | cut -d " " -f 3 | tr "()" " " | grep "$cur" ) )
else
COMPREPLY=($(compgen -W "" -- "$cur"));
fi
}
complete -F _dasm dasm