https://github.com/nlitsme/ubidump

Tool for viewing and extracting files from an UBIFS image
https://github.com/nlitsme/ubidump

file-format filesystem firmware-tools reverse-engineering

Last synced: 23 days ago
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Tool for viewing and extracting files from an UBIFS image

Host: GitHub
URL: https://github.com/nlitsme/ubidump
Owner: nlitsme
License: mit
Created: 2017-04-06T08:17:07.000Z (about 8 years ago)
Default Branch: master
Last Pushed: 2024-08-05T22:38:00.000Z (9 months ago)
Last Synced: 2025-03-28T15:03:56.028Z (about 1 month ago)
Topics: file-format, filesystem, firmware-tools, reverse-engineering
Language: Python
Size: 113 KB
Stars: 252
Watchers: 14
Forks: 65
Open Issues: 13
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE

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README

        UBIFS Dumper

============

This tool can be used to view or extract the contents of UBIFS images.

About UBIFS

===========

UBIFS is a filesystem specifically designed for used on NAND flash chips.

NAND flash is organized in _eraseblocks_. _Eraseblocks_ can be erased,

appended to, and read. Erasing is a relatively expensive operation, and can

be done only a limited number of times.

An UBIFS image contains four abstraction layers:

 * eraseblocks

 * volumes

 * b-tree nodes

 * inodes

Each eraseblock contains info on how often it has been erased, and which volume it belongs to.

A volume contains a b-tree database with keys for:

 * inodes, indexed by inode number

 * direntries, indexed by inode number + name hash

 * datablocks, indexed by inode number + block number

The inodes are basically a standard unix filesystem, with direntries, regular files, symlinks, devices, etc.

mounting images on linux

------------------------

    modprobe nandsim first_id_byte=0x2c second_id_byte=0xac third_id_byte=0x90 fourth_id_byte=0x26

    nandwrite /dev/mtd0   firmware-image.ubi 

    modprobe ubi mtd=/dev/mtd0,4096

    mount -t ubifs  -o ro /dev/ubi0_0 mnt

This will mount a ubi image for a device with eraseblock size 0x40000.

If your image has a blocksize of 0x20000, use `fourth_id_byte=0x15`, and specify a pagesize of `2048`

with the second modprobe line.

Usage

=====

View the contents of the `/etc/passwd` file in the filesystem image `image.ubi`:

    python ubidump.py  -c /etc/passwd  image.ubi

List the files in all the volumes in `image.ubi`:

    python ubidump.py  -l  image.ubi

View the contents of b-tree database from the volumes in `image.ubi`:

    python ubidump.py  -d  image.ubi

Extract an unsupported volume type, so you can analyze it with other tools:

    python ubidump.py  -v 0 --saveraw unknownvol.bin  image.ubi

Note that often ubi images contain squashfs volumes, which can be extracted using tools like

[unsquashfs](https://github.com/plougher/squashfs-tools) or [rdsquashfs](https://github.com/AgentD/squashfs-tools-ng)

Install

=======

Install the required python modules using:

    pip install -r requirements.txt

or as a pip package:

    pip install ubidump

You may need to manually install your operarating system libraries for lzo first:

on linux:

    apt install liblzo2-dev

on MacOS:

    brew install lzo

maybe you need to build the python library like this:

    LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/lzo pip3 install python-lzo

When you need zstd compression, you will need to install the `zstandard` module.

Dependencies

============

 * python2 or python3

 * python-lzo  ( >= 1.09, which introduces the 'header=False' argument )

 * crcmod

 * optional: zstandard

TODO

====

 * add option to select a volume

 * add option to select a older `master` node

 * parse the journal

 * analyze b-tree structure for unused nodes

 * analyze fs structure for unused inodes, dirents

 * verify that data block size equals the size mentioned in the inode.

 * add support for ubifs ( without the ubi layer )

 * add option to extract a raw volume.

References

==========

 * the ubifs/mtd tools http://linux-mtd.infradead.org/

 * git repos can be found [here](http://git.infradead.org/)

Similar tools

=============

 * another python tool  [on github](https://github.com/jrspruitt/ubi_reader/)

     * does not support listing files.

 * a closed source windows tool [here](http://ubidump.oozoon.de/)

 * ubi-utils/ubidump.c [on the mtd mailinglist](http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2014-July/054547.html)

Author

======

Willem Hengeveld

ecosyste.ms

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https://github.com/nlitsme/ubidump

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