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# Bochs debugger FAQ

General:

- How are breakpoints treated by IDA Bochs Plugin: Bochs debugger does not use breakpoints by inserting 0xCC at the given address. Instead, since it is an emulator, it constantly compares the current instruction pointer against the breakpoint list. Data breakpoints are supported by Bochs and are known as “watchpoints”. If the user creates hardware breakpoints, IDA will automatically create Bochs watchpoints.

- How to select the Bochs operation mode programmatically: using IDC: it is possible to use process_config_line() function to pass a key=value. For example, process_config_line(“DEFAULT_MODE=1”) will select the disk image operation mode. (Please refer to cfg\dbg_bochs.cfg for list of configurable options).

- When debugging, IDA undefines instructions: if the “Debugger options / Reconstruct stack” is checked and the stack pointer is in the same segment as the currently executing code, then IDA might undefine instructions. To solve this program, uncheck the reconstruct stack option.

- How to convert from physical to linear addresses and vice versa: Bochs internal debugger provides two useful commands for this: “info tab” and “page”.

Disk image operation mode:

- Data/Software breakpoints are not always triggered: During a debugging session, when a breakpoint is created while the protected mode/paging is enabled, the page table information is used to translate addresses and correctly create the breakpoint. When debugging session is started again, IDA cannot access translation tables to re-create the same breakpoint, thus the breakpoint will be created without any translation information (it will be treated as physical addresses) This is why those breakpoints are not triggered. As a workaround, we suggest disabling those breakpoints and re-enable them when paging is enabled. This problem can also arise when the “use virtual breakpoints” option is enabled.

IDB/PE operation mode:

- Cannot map VA: Sometimes, IDA may display a message stating that a given VA could not be mapped. This mainly happens because both IDB/PE operation modes use virtual addresses from 0x0 to 0x9000 and from 0xE0000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF internally. To solve the problem, please rebase the program to another area:

      - IDB operation mode: use Edit, Segment, Rebase program
      - PE operation mode: rebase the input file using a third party utility

PE operation mode:

- Dynamic DLL loading: sometimes, when running a program, the plugin may attempt to load a DLL that is not declared in the stub or load section of the startup script. In this case, please write down the name of the DLL, then add it to the startup script, and restart the debug session. It is possible to create a local copy, next to your database, of startup scripts so that these scripts will be used with this database only.

- Disk image loading slow: The disk image produced in the PE operation mode can be as big as 20MB. The reason for this slow loading is most probably because the plugin tries to load all referenced DLLs instead of stubbing them. To fix this, when the process starts, please take note of the loaded DLLs list (using IDA / Modules List) then add the desired module names in the startup.* / “stub” section. See also: Bochs debugger