Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Using OpenOCD and GDB

Reverse engineering an existing STM32 hardware device.

I first started reverse engineering the STM32 based programmable power supply as described in a prior blog post. The more I dug into Johan's code, the more impressed I became. There's a real gem stashed away in his project: the ocd-client.py utility. This is a work of genius!

Rather than play on my only DPS, I instead did some experimenting using the STM32_Smart V2 device, with a simple blink app installed.

I learned how to use OpenOCD with GDB with the UDemy class by Peter Dalmaris called Advanced Arduino Boards and Tools. Although this was an Arduino-specific class - the instructions are the same for the STM32 devices.

First, the OpenOCD server needs to be running (in this case with the Segger J-Link):


cd ~/workspace/opendps/openocd/scripts
sudo openocd -f interface/jlink.cfg -f target/stm32f1x.cfg

# or

sudo openocd -f interface/stlink-v2.cfg -f target/stm32f1x.cfg


With no other OpenOCD client connected (e.g. gdb not running!), we can inspect the GPIO Port C  like this:

cd ~/workspace/opendps
./ocd-client.py gpioc

That command should return something like this:

GPIOC settings
CRL      : 0x44444444  [0x40011000]
CRH      : 0x44344444  [0x40011004]
IDR      : 0x0000e000  [0x40011008]
ODR      : 0x00002000  [0x4001100c]
BSRR     : 0x00000000  [0x40011010]
BRR      : 0x00000000  [0x40011014]
LCKR     : 0x00000000  [0x40011018]

launch gdb. Note that a special one called "arm-none-eabi-gdb" is needed. I think gdb is really best with the "-tui" (text user interface) option turned on. Although not as cool as a full featured IDE such as Visual Studio, it is an impressive little text-based debugger.


cd ~/workspace/opendps/opendps
arm-none-eabi-gdb -d ./ -f opendps.elf -tui

then from the gdb prompt:


target remote localhost:3333
monitor reset init

If more source code is desired (beyond that in the app itself), in Ubunto go to "System settings - Software and Updates"


and be sure "source" is selected:

without the "Source code" checkbox, you'll see an error like:

E: You must put some 'source' URIs in your sources.list

WITH that setting, then you can do things like:


sudo apt-get build-dep gcc
sudo apt-get build-dep libusb-1.0-0-dev
sudo apt-get build-dep  gcc-arm-none-eabi

# this next command will typically install source code in your
# $USER\gcc-arm-none-eabi-4.9.3+svn231177
sudo apt-get source  gcc-arm-none-eabi


then in gdb:


directory  gcc-arm-none-eabi-4.9.3+svn231177/src/libgcc/config/arm


I used that include directory as "ctrl-c" would typically break in this file:

../../../../src/libgcc/config/arm/ieee754-df.S


MYLOG=~/toolchain.log
sudo apt-get update  --assume-yes | tee -a $MYLOG

sudo apt-get install ssh  --assume-yes
sudo apt-get install xrdp  --assume-yes
sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin  --assume-yes
sudo apt-get install fail2ban  --assume-yes

sudo apt-get install binutils  --assume-yes
sudo apt-get install gcc  --assume-yes
sudo apt-get install gdb  --assume-yes
sudo apt-get install make  --assume-yes

sudo apt-get install build-essential  --assume-yes

sudo apt-get install python  --assume-yes

sudo apt-get install gawk  --assume-yes

(TODO - I plan to put the whole toolchain script on github)

Additional resources and inspiration:

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