The IDA Pro Book, 2nd Edition

IDA Databases and the IDA Debugger

It is important that we begin with an understanding of how the debugger treats your database when you initiate (and terminate) a debugging session. A debugger needs a process image to work with. Debuggers obtain process images either by attaching to existing processes or by creating new processes from executable files. An IDA database does not contain a valid process image, nor in most cases can a valid process image be reconstructed from a database (if one could, then File ▸ Produce File ▸ Create EXE File might be simple to implement). When you launch a debugger session from IDA, the disassembler side informs the debugger side of the name of the original input file, which the debugger uses to create and attach ...