in my project i injected a DLL(64-bit Windows 10) in to a external process with Manual-map & Thread-hijacking and i do some stuff in there.
In current state i use "RtlCreateUserThread" to create a new thread and do some extra workload in there to distribute it for better performance.
My question is now... Is it possible to access other threads from the current process (hijack it) and add your own workload/code there. Without creating a new thread?
I didn't found anything helpful yet in the internet and the code i used and modified for Thread-hijacking seems to only work for a DLL file. Because i am pretty new to C++ i am still learning i am already thankful for any help.
(If you want to see the source for injector Google GHInjector your find the library on github.)
It is possible, but so complicated and may not work in all cases.
You need to splice existing thread's machine codes, so you will need write access to code page memory.
Logic:
find thread id and thread handle, then suspend thread with SuspendThread WINAPI call
suspended thread can be in wait state or in system DLL call now, so you need to analyze current execution stack, backtrace it and find execution address from application space. You need API functions StackWalk, and PDB files in some cases. Also it depends on running architecture (x86, amd64, ...). Walk through stack until your EIP/RIP will not be in application memory address space
decode machine instruction (it will be 'call') and splice next instructions to your function call. You need to use __declspec(naked) declared function or ASM implemented one for execute your code and replaced instructions.
ResumeThread
This method may work only once because no guarantees that application code is executed in loop.
I have a web application, using Spring-Boot. There is now a need for this application to use a custom dll (in house build dll file). There is nothing wrong with this dll, as we use it on our other applications, and have no problems with it.
To load the library in this new web application I'm writing, I have added the dll file to the procrun directory. This directory is on the library path, so that makes sense.
During startup I put in code to immediately load the dll, and also test some of its functionality. This works fine.
However, I have a timer, that schedules the execution of some functions, which may or may not include function calls to the dll.
At some point, about 10 minutes or so into execution, the service unexpected and seemingly without any valid reason, stops.
Although I try/catch exceptions at the appropriate logical places in code, there are no relevant log entries printed.
The Event Log shows something that reminds me of a null pointer exception:
Another bread crumb is that the event log will print something about the dll_unload. (see picture)
I need some help figuring out why the service is failing/stopping.
Kind Regards.
EDIT: After about three days of debugging and scratching my head, I came upon a forum thread that explained that this problem has something to do with the manner in which the system releases the memory during garbage collection. It seems that the dll in question was being unloaded by the garbage collector, even though it could still be called at some time later - which of course was the cause of the service falling over.
To solve the problem, I put in a timer that would call a method in the dll at three minute intervals (on my system this would not impact performance). I know this solution is a hack, but it works for me.
I've been using ESENT for my projects quite extensively and I really love how easy and fast it works. And stable too!!
But I have a HUGE problem with Windows 8!!! Regardless of how I link to the esent.dll (dynamically or statically) whenever I call something other than JetSetSystemParameter, the dll is crashing, takig my app down the cliff.
Unfortunately I still can't get it running. My code had no problem running with Windows 7 or older. But with Windows 8 I get esent.dll crashing when I try to create an instance (floating point invalid operation).
I tried all possible calling conventions. This is definitely NOT the problem. I tried some more and discovered this weird situation: 1. I created a demo application using VS 2012 and JetCreateInstance worked just fine. 2. Exactly the same code in Delphi XE3 will send esent.dll crashing. 3. I created a DLL using VS 2012, exporting the method that worked perfectly in the above demo app, thinking it's a Delphi bug. 4. And then I loaded the DLL in a demo Delphi project (tried with 6, XE2 and XE3). Called the method and BOOM. Same crash.
Now my assumption is that Microsoft won't allow?!? any other developer environment to work correctly with the esent.dll. Is this possible???
The error, a floating point invalid operation, makes the problem sound as though it is related to the floating point control word.
By default Delphi unmasks floating point exceptions. So when code asks the floating point unit to perform operations that result in errors, the FPU signals which is then converted to an exception.
But most other Windows development environments mask these exceptions on the FPU. Such code is written under the assumption that the execution environment has FPU exceptions masked. But if you call a DLL from Delphi, the execution environment will have unmasked FPU exceptions, breaking that assumption. I suspect that if you mask FPU exceptions then your problems will disappear.
To test if this is the problem, you can simply add this to your code, executed early in its life:
Set8087CW($027F);
This will mask all exceptions and set the FPU control word to the default Windows setting.
In the longer term you may wish to mask exceptions before each call to this DLL, and then restore the FPU control word when the call to the DLL returns.
That is a slightly dangerous game using the libraries that are supplied with Delphi since Set8087CW is not threadsafe due to its use of the global variable Default8087CW. If you wish to read more about that issue, I refer you to QC#107411.
I've created a mixed DLL (C++/CLI) and after successfully calling it from a plain ANSI C application, I've moved on to calling it from a C++ COM server (using the same C entry points). However even before the COM server successfully starts or calls into the DLL I get a "access violation" in ntdll.dll. The call stack just has ntdll.dll!ExecuteHandler2 repeated multiple times to the point where a stack over flow is reported in the VS debug output. I can see my mixed mode DLL and mscoree.dll are loaded.
I added the mixed DLL to the delay loaded DLL options of the COM server and it appears to work.
Why does the mixed DLL need to be delay loaded in the C++ COM Server when the C application I wrote seems to work fine without delay loading? How do I go about debugging this problem (unless this is expected, however I couldn't find anything about it)?
Looks like a COM Appartment needs to be initialized. COM appartments are used to care of threads synchronization.
I'm working on a project which will entail multiple devices, each with an embedded (ARM) processor, communicating. One development approach which I have found useful in the past with projects that only entailed a single embedded processor was develop the code using Visual Studio, divided into three portions:
Main application code (in unmanaged C/C++ [see note])
I/O-simulating code (C/C++) that runs under Visual Studio
Embedded I/O code (C), which Visual Studio is instructed not to build, runs on the target system. Previously this code was for the PIC; for most future projects I'm migrating to the ARM.
Feeding the embedded compiler/linker the code from parts 1 and 3 yields a hex file that can run on the target system. Running parts 1 and 2 together yields code which can run on the PC, with the benefit of better debugging tools and more precise control over I/O behavior (e.g. I can make the simulation code introduce certain types of random hiccups more easily than I can induce controlled hiccups on real hardware).
Target code is written in C, but the simulation environment uses C++ so as to simulate I/O registers. For example, I have a PortArray data structure; the header file for the embedded compiler includes a line like unsigned char LATA # 0xF89; and my header file for simulation includes #define LATA _IOBIT(f89,1) which in turn invokes a macro that accesses a suitable property of an I/O object, so a statement like LATA |= 4; will read the simulated latch, "or" the read value with 4, and write the new value. To make this work, the target code has to compile under C++ as well as under C, but this mostly isn't a problem. The biggest annoyance is probably with enum types (which behave as integers in C, but have to be coaxed to do so in C++).
Previously, I've used two approaches to making the simulation interactive:
Compile and link a DLL with target-application and simulation code, and have VB code in the same project which interacts with it.
Compile the target-application code and some simulation code to an EXE with instance of Visual Studio, and use a second instance of Visual Studio for the simulation-UI. Have the two programs communicate via TCP, so nearly all "real" I/O logic is in the simulation program. For example, the aforementioned `LATA |= 4;` would send a "read port 0xF89" command to the TCP port, get the response, process the received value, and send a "write port 0xF89" command with the result.
I've found the latter approach to run a tiny bit slower than the former in some cases, but it seems much more convenient for debugging, since I can suspend execution of the unmanaged simulation code while the simulation UI remains responsive. Indeed, for simulating a single target device at a time, I think the latter approach works extremely well. My question is how I should best go about simulating a plurality of target devices (e.g. 16 of them).
The difficulty I have is figuring out how to make each simulated instance get its own set of global variables. If I were to compile to an EXE and run one instance of the EXE for each simulated target device, that would work, but I don't know any practical way to maintain debugger support while doing that. Another approach would be to arrange the target code so that everything would compile as one module joined together via #include. For simulation purposes, everything could then be wrapped into a single C++ class, with global variables turning into class-instance variables. That would be a bit more object-oriented, but I really don't like the idea of forcing all the application code to live in one compiled and linked module.
What would perhaps be ideal would be if the code could load multiple instances of the DLL, each with its own set of global variables. I have no idea how to do that, however, nor do I know how to make things interact with the debugger. I don't think it's really necessary that all simulated target devices actually execute code simultaneously; it would be perfectly acceptable for simulation instances to use cooperative multitasking. If there were some way of finding out what range of memory holds the global variables, it might be possible to have the 'task-switch' method swap out all of the global variables used by the previously-running instance and swap in the contents applicable to the instance being switched in. Although I'd know how to do that in an embedded context, though, I'd have no idea how to do that on the PC.
Edit
My questions would be:
Is there any nicer way to allow simulation logic to be paused and examined in VS2010 debugger, while keeping a responsive UI for the simulator front-end, than running the simulator front end and the simulator logic in separate instances of VS2010, if the simulation logic must be written in C and the simulation front end in managed code? For example, is there a way to tell the debugger that when a breakpoint is hit, some or all other threads should be allowed to keep running while the thread that had hit the breakpoint sits paused?
If the bulk of the simulation logic must be source-code compatible with an embedded system written in C (so that the same source files can be compiled and run for simulation purposes under VS2010, and then compiled by the embedded-systems compiler for use in real hardware), is there any way to have the VS2010 debugger interact with multiple simulated instances of the embedded device? Assume performance is not likely to be an issue, but the number of instances will be large enough that creating a separate project for each instance would be likely be annoying in the absence of any way to automate the process. I can think of three somewhat-workable approaches, but don't know how to make any of them work really nicely. There's also an approach which would be better if it's possible, but I don't know how to make it work.
Wrap all the simulation code within a single C++ class, such that what would be global variables in the target system become class members. I'm leaning toward this approach, but it would seem to require everything to be compiled as a single module, which would annoyingly affect the design of the target system code. Is there any nice way to have code access class instance members as though they were globals, without requiring all functions using such instances to be members of the same module?
Compile a separate DLL for each simulated instance (so that e.g. if I want to run up to 16 instances, I would include 16 DLL's in the project, all sharing the same source files). This could work, but every change to the project configuration would have to be repeated 16 times. Really ugly.
Compile the simulation logic to an EXE, and run an appropriate number of instances of that EXE. This could work, but I don't know of any convenient way to do things like set a breakpoint common to all instances. Is it possible to have multiple running instances of an EXE attached to a single debugger instance?
Load multiple instances of a DLL in such a way that each instance gets its own global variables, while still being accessible in the debugger. This would be nicest if it were possible, but I don't know any way to do so. Is it possible? How? I've never used AppDomains, but my intuition would suggest that might be useful here.
If I use one VS2010 instance for the front-end, and another for the simulation logic, is there any way to arrange things so that starting code in one will automatically launch the code in the other?
I'm not particularly committed to any single simulation approach; while it might be nice to know if there's some way of slightly improving the above, I'd also like to know of any other alternative approaches that could work even better.
I would think that you'd still have to run 16 copies of your main application code, but that your TCP-based I/O simulator could keep a different set of registers/state for each TCP connection that comes in.
Instead of a bunch of global variables, put them into a single structure that encompasses the I/O state of a single device. Either spawn off a new thread for each socket, or just keep a list of active sockets and dedicate a single instance of the state structure for each socket.
the simulators I have seen that handle multiple instances of the instruction set/processor are designed that way. There is a structure usually that contains a complete set of registers, and a new pointer or an array of these structures are used to multiply them into multiple instances of the processor.