Remote debugging with IDA and GDB

Question

Recently I've run across an ELF file that I would like to debug using IDA. I've used GDB for basic debugging but I would like to utilize IDA. I've been researching for a while and can't seem to find a good tutorial. I understand how to set IDA up for remote GDB debugging. My question is how do I set it up on the remote/Ubuntu/GDB end. Is there additional software that I have to install with GDB? I've seen some stuff on gdbserver but I can't seem to get that working. I've also seem some stuff on QEMU. A little direction is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I'd suggest you use IDA's linux_server for remote debugging , it's located somewhere in your installation.

You copy it to the remote machine and run it. And then in IDA you go Debugger -> Select Remote Linux Debugger. Then Debugging -> Process Options where you set the server IP and port, target location and params.

From then on, you just use IDA's debugger as you would locally. The benefit of using IDA's linux_server is that you can script your debugger more easily.

Answer 2

With regard to your problem setting up gdbserver to run with Ubuntu - it should be sufficient to install the 'gdbserver' package from the universe repository. If it's a local file that you are debugging, you start the server using something like gdbserver localhost:12345 a.out where a.out is the executable and 12345 is the port number to connect on. That should be a server which you can connect to using IDA's "Remote GDB debugger" option.