rr-debugger / rr-debugger/rr

Way to search for string occurence during the lifetime of the program

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Dominant language
C++
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Request

I'm loving this project so much. I'm curious about the possibility of finding a specific string value (or byte sequence in general) that might've occurred and got dropped at some point during the execution of the program. This would be a really helpful feature for debugging, especially in the context of reverse engineering.

Context

I made a dummy Rust code that has a get_user_input() function that prints "Type Something: " and waits for user input, and a main() function that calls get_user_input() inside an infinite loop as shown here:

use std::io::{self, Write};

fn get_user_input() {
    print!("Type something: ");
    std::io::stdout().flush().expect("Failed to flush");

    let mut input = String::new();

    io::stdin()
        .read_line(&mut input)
        .expect("Failed to read line");

    println!("{}", input);
}

fn main() {
    // Print function addresse at runtime
    let addr = get_user_input as *const ();
    println!("Input function location: {:p}", addr);

    loop {
        get_user_input();
    }
}

Rust automatically drops the input variable once the get_user_input() function goes out of scope. The string value itself stays in memory, I was able to verify that using PINCE (a Cheat Engine alternative in Linux). But AFAIU, rr doesn't keep track of unallocated memory because it's unnecessary to reproduce the deterministic outcome of the program. So, in order to find that string in the replay and do a bunch of crazy RE stuff like seeing where it originally came from, I would need to position myself in the right time frame.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the Rust get_user_input() and main() example, then investigate how rr handles replay state after input is dropped. Done would be a defined way to locate a previously observed string or byte sequence and trace it back to its earlier execution context.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, rust
Domain
reverse-engineering
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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