IDA DOSBox debugger plugin

Authors:
Eric Fry <[email protected]>
Willem Jan Palenstijn <[email protected]>


Getting started:

Get the plugin from https://github.com/wjp/idados .
Get a patched DOSBox from the 'idados' branch of https://github.com/wjp/dosbox .
Build the plugin and DOSBox as described in the BUILD file.

Inside dosbox, start the binary X you wish to debug with 'debug X'.
It will then pause while waiting for a connection from IDA.

In IDA, start the debugger selecting the "Remote DOSBox" debugger.
You should be able to leave the connection options at their defaults.



Notes:

This plugin has not been tested on many platforms, but it has been reported to
work with 32-bit IDA 6.4 Starter on 64-bit Linux and 64-bit Mac OS X. Older
versions have been known to work with mingw32 on Windows, but it is unknown if
this still works out of the box.

The debugger plugin will rebase the program to match the memory location
in dosbox, but there have been many bugs with this in older versions of IDA.
If this is causing problems, try manually rebasing before starting the debugger,
or even recreating the database at the right offset.

There is a known bug with breakpoints on the program entry point. As a
workaround, you can use the "Suspend on debugging start" option in IDA if you
wish to break on starting the process. Breakpoints at other locations should
work fine.

Using the dynamic core in dosbox can lead to unexpected behaviour. Use the
normal core instead.

With a 32-bit IDA, you will have to build a 32-bit dosbox, even on 64-bit
platforms.

And finally, patches to improve the plugin are most welcome!