kern_bin_db - kernel source symbols extractor and DB builder

Motivation

kern_bin_db has been developed to produce a structured kernel symbol and xrefs database (SQL). Such database can help manual source code analysis, easing the source code, and allowing automated checks such as the scan for recursive functions and similar queries.

Prerequisites

In order to develop this project you need to install the radare2 dev package:

Fedora

$ sudo dnf install radare2-devel

Arch Linux

$ sudo pacman -S radare2

Build

kern_bin_db is implemented in Golang. Golang applications are usually easy to build. In addition to this, it has very few dependencies other than the standard Golang packages. A Makefile is provided to ease the build process.

Just typing

$ make

the native build is made.

In addition to the default target, amd64, arm64, and upx, targets exists.

target	function
amd64	forces the build to amd64 aka x86_64 regardless the underlying architecture
arm64	forces the build to arm64 aka aarc64 regardless the underlying architecture
upx	triggers compress previously generated executable using UPX

As example, this builds aarch64 upx compressed executable:

$ make arm64
$ make upx

Usage example

The following is the command line switches list from the kern_bin_db help.

$ ./kern_bin_db -h
Kernel symbol fetcher
        -f      <v>     specifies json configuration file
        -s      <v>     Forces use specified strip binary
        -e      <v>     Forces to use a specified DB Driver (i.e. postgres, mysql or sqlite3)
        -d      <v>     Forces to use a specified DB DSN
        -n      <v>     Forecs use specified note (default 'upstream')
        -c              Checks dependencies
        -h              This Help

After having compiled a good default by specifying the Postgres database backend, start collecting symbols is as easy as issuing the following command:

$ ./kern_bin_db -f conf.json -n "Custom kernel from NXP bsp"

Sample configuration:

{
"LinuxWDebug":          "vmlinux",
"LinuxWODebug":         "vmlinux.work",
"StripBin":             "/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-strip",
"DBDriver":             "postgres",
"DBDSN":                "host=dbs.hqhome163.com port=5432 user=alessandro password=<password> dbname=kernel_bin sslmode=disable",
"Maintainers_fn":       "MAINTAINERS",
"KConfig_fn":           "include/generated/autoconf.h",
"KMakefile":            "Makefile",
"Mode":                 15,
"Note":                 "upstream"
}

Configuration is a file containing a JSON serialized conf object

Field	description	type	Default value
LinuxWDebug	Linux image built with the debug symbols, input for the operation	string	vmlinux
LinuxWODebug	File created after the strip operation, and on which the R" tool operates on	string	vmlinux.work
StripBin	Executable that performs the strip operation to the selected architecture.	string	/usr/bin/strip
DBDriver	Name of DB engine driver, i.e. postgres, mysql or sqlite3	string	postgres
DBDSN	DSN in the engine specific format	string	See Note
Maintainers_fn	The path to MAINTAINERS file, typically in the kernel source tree	string	MAINTAINERS
KConfig_fn	The path to autoconf file containing the current build configuration	string	include/generated/autoconf.h
KMakefile	The path to main kernel sourcecode Makefile, typically sitting on the kernel tree /	string	Makefile
Mode	Mode of operation, use only for debug purpose. Defaults to 15	integer	15
Note	The string gets copied to the database. Consider a sort of tag for the data set	string	upstream

NOTE: Defaults are designed to make the tool work out of the box, if the executable is placed in the Linux kernel source code root directory.

Currently the default DBDSN value is set to: host=dbs.hqhome163.com port=5432 user=alessandro password= dbname=kernel_bin sslmode=disable to be consistent with the previous default configuration.

For sqlite the DBDSN can be as simple as just the filename of the database file: kernel-symbol.db.

In any case, before starting kern_bin_db, the DB schema needs to be created manually with one of the provided sql-files.

DSN examples

DBMS	Example
MySQL/MariaDB	alessandro:@tcp(dbs.hqhome163.com:3306)/kernel_bin?multiStatements=true
Postgresql	host=dbs.hqhome163.com port=5432 user=alessandro password= dbname=kernel_bin sslmode=disable

TODO

• currently, kern_bin_db scans only the kernel binary image. Loadable modules are not considered, which means that symbols defined in modules are not considered. A useful extension would be to scan modules in a given kernel tree and add symbols to the database.
• in relation to the previous, it would be useful to track the symbol source (kernel image/module). The database does not currently support this feature, which means that the database schema needs to be adapted.
• Indirect calls ate difficult to follow, but the place in the source where they are called can be easily spotted. It makes sense to note this place for future automated/manual investigations. In addition, it makes also sense to reserve a place in the same row of the same table for a field that links another table, where possible references are kept. In this way, the future nav version can expand indirect calls as a finite number of calls.