Linux Kernel Structure Definition Lookup Script

Introduction

If you've ever written anything kernel side for Linux, I'm sure you've bashed your head on the keyboard as many times as I have looking through lackluster documentation and scouring source files to find structure definitions. Here's a little script that will show you the source file and line number of the given structure definition.

First of all, this script relies on a fantastic website that allows you to easily search through the Linux source files http://lxr.linux.no. I simply wrote a script to parse the output to show structure definition locations. Change the URL in the script depending on your current kernel version number.

Example

$ ./structure.py crypto_tfm
[-] Searching for all structure definitions of: crypto_tfm
[+] drivers/staging/rtl8192e/rtl8192e/rtl_crypto.h, line 186
[+] drivers/staging/rtl8192u/ieee80211/rtl_crypto.h, line 189
[+] include/linux/crypto.h, line 413

The Source

#!/usr/bin/python
# Linux Kernel Structure Search

import sys
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
import requests

def main(argv):
 struct_search = "http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v3.11/+code=" + argv[0]
 in_struct = 0
 
 print "[-] Searching for all structure definitions of: " + argv[0]
 
 req = requests.get(struct_search)
 soup = BeautifulSoup(req.text)

 spanTag = soup.findAll('span')
 for tag in spanTag:
  try: 
   myclass = tag['class']
   if myclass == 'identtype':
    if tag.string == "Structure":
     in_struct = 1
    elif in_struct:
     break
  
   if myclass == "resultline" and in_struct:
    aTag = tag.find('a')
    print "[+] " + aTag.text
  except: 
   ohnoez=1

 if not in_struct:
  print "[-] No Structures Found"
  
if __name__ == "__main__":
 main(sys.argv[1:])