IO plugins

All access to files, network, debugger and all input/output in general is wrapped by an IO abstraction layer that allows radare to treat all data as if it were just a file.

IO plugins are the ones used to wrap the open, read, write and ‘system’ on virtual file systems. You can make radare understand anything as a plain file. E.g. a socket connection, a remote radare session, a file, a process, a device, a gdb session.

So, when radare reads a block of bytes, it is the task of an IO plugin to get these bytes from any place and put them into internal buffer. An IO plugin is chosen by a file’s URI to be opened. Some examples:

  • Debugging URIs
  1. $ r2 dbg:///bin/ls<br />
  2. $ r2 pid://1927
  • Remote sessions
  1. $ r2 rap://:1234<br />
  2. $ r2 rap://<host>:1234//bin/ls
  • Virtual buffers
  1. $ r2 malloc://512<br />
  2. shortcut for
  3. $ r2 -

You can get a list of the radare IO plugins by typing radare2 -L:

  1. $ r2 -L
  2. rw_  ar       Open ar/lib files [ar|lib]://[file//path] (LGPL3)
  3. rw_  bfdbg    BrainFuck Debugger (bfdbg://path/to/file) (LGPL3)
  4. rwd  bochs    Attach to a BOCHS debugger (LGPL3)
  5. r_d  debug    Native debugger (dbg:///bin/ls dbg://1388 pidof:// waitfor://) (LGPL3) v0.2.0 pancake
  6. rw_  default  open local files using def_mmap:// (LGPL3)
  7. rwd  gdb      Attach to gdbserver, 'qemu -s', gdb://localhost:1234 (LGPL3)
  8. rw_  gprobe   open gprobe connection using gprobe:// (LGPL3)
  9. rw_  gzip     read/write gzipped files (LGPL3)
  10. rw_  http     http get (http://rada.re/) (LGPL3)
  11. rw_  ihex     Intel HEX file (ihex://eeproms.hex) (LGPL)
  12. r__  mach     mach debug io (unsupported in this platform) (LGPL)
  13. rw_  malloc   memory allocation (malloc://1024 hex://cd8090) (LGPL3)
  14. rw_  mmap     open file using mmap:// (LGPL3)
  15. rw_  null     null-plugin (null://23) (LGPL3)
  16. rw_  procpid  /proc/pid/mem io (LGPL3)
  17. rwd  ptrace   ptrace and /proc/pid/mem (if available) io (LGPL3)
  18. rwd  qnx      Attach to QNX pdebug instance, qnx://host:1234 (LGPL3)
  19. rw_  r2k      kernel access API io (r2k://) (LGPL3)
  20. rw_  r2pipe   r2pipe io plugin (MIT)
  21. rw_  r2web    r2web io client (r2web://cloud.rada.re/cmd/) (LGPL3)
  22. rw_  rap      radare network protocol (rap://:port rap://host:port/file) (LGPL3)
  23. rw_  rbuf     RBuffer IO plugin: rbuf:// (LGPL)
  24. rw_  self     read memory from myself using 'self://' (LGPL3)
  25. rw_  shm      shared memory resources (shm://key) (LGPL3)
  26. rw_  sparse   sparse buffer allocation (sparse://1024 sparse://) (LGPL3)
  27. rw_  tcp      load files via TCP (listen or connect) (LGPL3)
  28. rwd  windbg   Attach to a KD debugger (windbg://socket) (LGPL3)
  29. rwd  winedbg  Wine-dbg io and debug.io plugin for r2 (MIT)
  30. rw_  zip      Open zip files [apk|ipa|zip|zipall]://[file//path] (BSD)