98  IO plugins

All access to files, network, debugger and all input/output in general is wrapped by an IO abstraction layer that allows rizin 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 rizin understand anything as a plain file. E.g. a socket connection, a remote rizin session, a file, a process, a device, a gdb session.

So, when rizin 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:

$ rizin dbg:///bin/ls<br />
$ rizin pid://1927
$ rizin rap://:1234<br />
$ rizin rap://<host>:1234//bin/ls
$ rizin malloc://512<br />
shortcut for
$ rizin =

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

$ rizin -L
rw_  ar       Open ar/lib files [ar|lib]://[file//path] (LGPL3)
rw_  bfdbg    BrainFuck Debugger (bfdbg://path/to/file) (LGPL3)
rwd  bochs    Attach to a BOCHS debugger (LGPL3)
r_d  debug    Native debugger (dbg:///bin/ls dbg://1388 pidof:// waitfor://) (LGPL3) v0.2.0 pancake
rw_  default  open local files using def_mmap:// (LGPL3)
rwd  gdb      Attach to gdbserver, 'qemu -s', gdb://localhost:1234 (LGPL3)
rw_  gprobe   open gprobe connection using gprobe:// (LGPL3)
rw_  gzip     read/write gzipped files (LGPL3)
rw_  http     http get (http://rada.re/) (LGPL3)
rw_  ihex     Intel HEX file (ihex://eeproms.hex) (LGPL)
r__  mach     mach debug io (unsupported in this platform) (LGPL)
rw_  malloc   memory allocation (malloc://1024 hex://cd8090) (LGPL3)
rw_  mmap     open file using mmap:// (LGPL3)
rw_  null     null-plugin (null://23) (LGPL3)
rw_  procpid  /proc/pid/mem io (LGPL3)
rwd  ptrace   ptrace and /proc/pid/mem (if available) io (LGPL3)
rwd  qnx      Attach to QNX pdebug instance, qnx://host:1234 (LGPL3)
rw_  rzk      kernel access API io (rzk://) (LGPL3)
rw_  rz-pipe   rz-pipe io plugin (MIT)
rw_  rzweb    rzweb io client (rzweb://cloud.rada.re/cmd/) (LGPL3)
rw_  rap      rizin network protocol (rap://:port rap://host:port/file) (LGPL3)
rw_  rbuf     RBuffer IO plugin: rbuf:// (LGPL)
rw_  self     read memory from myself using 'self://' (LGPL3)
rw_  shm      shared memory resources (shm://key) (LGPL3)
rw_  sparse   sparse buffer allocation (sparse://1024 sparse://) (LGPL3)
rw_  tcp      load files via TCP (listen or connect) (LGPL3)
rwd  windbg   Attach to a KD debugger (windbg://socket) (LGPL3)
rwd  winedbg  Wine-dbg io and debug.io plugin for rizin (MIT)
rw_  zip      Open zip files [apk|ipa|zip|zipall]://[file//path] (BSD)