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Running bindiff export does not result in `.BinExport` file being created

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#52 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale

Research direction

Start with the reproduction using /opt/bindiff/bin/bindiff --export on the Envoy binary and inspect the IDA export path mentioned in main_plugin.cc. Compare the files observed with opensnoop and review ~/.bindiff/logs/bindiff_idapro.log; done means the expected .BinExport file is created for the reported IDA and Bindiff versions.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Describe the bug
I'm trying to diff an envoy file containing debug symbols against an optimized release image. I initially tried to diff them against each other through the IDA plugin window and received the "Exporting the secondary database failed." error.

After looking into the source a bit, I tried to run the /opt/bindiff/bin/bindiff directly to isolate what the problem is. It appears that the .BinExport files aren't being created by IDA. Please see my reproduction steps below and let me know if I can provide any more helpful context!

To Reproduce

  1. Download envoy v1.31.1
docker pull envoyproxy/envoy:v1.31-latest
container_sha=$(docker create envoyproxy/envoy:v1.31-latest)
docker cp ${container_sha}:/usr/local/bin/envoy ./
  1. Open binary in IDA and wait for initial analysis to complete
  2. Save IDA database file and close IDA
  3. Run bindiff export from the command line -- /opt/bindiff/bin/bindiff --export directory/containing/envoy-binary/
  4. See that no .BinExport file is created

Expected behavior
That a .BinExport file is created and I'm able to diff a file with debug symbols and the optimized release.

Environment (please complete the following information):

  • OS and version: Ubuntu 22 VM
  • Locale: US English
  • Disassembler and version: IDA Free 8.4
  • Bindiff v8 -- installed .deb from release page

Additional context

I noticed that bindiff is running the following ida64 command. I tried running that directly on my machine and used opensnoop to track what files ida64 is writing. Attached below are the commands I ran and the output from opensnoop. The ~/.bindiff/logs/bindiff_idapro.log file also doesn't contain much information.

Screen Shot 2024-08-12 at 3 05 21 PM

Dominant language
Java
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