[ANNOUNCE] drgn-mcp: natural-language kernel crash dump debugging with Claude

[ANNOUNCE] drgn-mcp: natural-language kernel crash dump debugging with Claude

[Wander Lairson Costa]

Hi all,

I'd like to announce drgn-mcp, an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that
connects drgn to Claude and other AI assistants, enabling natural-language
debugging of Linux kernel crash dumps.

I wrote this over the past week, so it is still in an early stage, but it is
already useful enough to share. Feedback and suggestions would be very
welcome at this point.

Instead of manually writing drgn Python expressions, you describe what you
want to investigate in plain English -- "what caused this crash?", "show me
what locks task 1234 is holding", "are there any BPF programs attached to
this cgroup?" -- and the AI calls the appropriate drgn tools on your behalf.

The server exposes 54 structured tools covering:

  - Core inspection: crash info, panic message, stack traces, threads
  - Memory analysis: hex dumps, typed reads, address translation, slab/page
    info, dmesg, memory search
  - Kernel subsystems: network devices, mounts, open files, BPF programs
    and maps, IRQs, cgroups, CPU runqueues, locks, timers
  - Data structure traversal: list_head, hlist_head, rbtree, xarray, IDR
  - A general-purpose eval_expression tool for anything not covered above

For anything the structured tools don't cover, eval_expression gives the AI
full access to the drgn Python API and all drgn.helpers.linux.* functions.

Getting started
===============

Prerequisites: Linux, Python 3.12+, uv (https://docs.astral.sh/uv/)

With Claude Code (https://claude.ai/code), add to your .mcp.json:

    {
      "mcpServers": {
        "drgn": {
          "command": "uvx",
          "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/walac/drgn-mcp", "drgn-mcp"]
        }
      }
    }

Then just ask Claude to load your vmcore and start investigating:

    "Load the crash dump at /var/crash/vmcore with debug symbols
     from /usr/lib/debug/boot/vmlinux-6.12.0 and tell me what happened."

It works with any MCP-compatible client, not just Claude.

Links
=====

  Repository: https://github.com/walac/drgn-mcp
  License: LGPL-2.1-or-later

I'd appreciate any feedback -- bug reports, feature requests, or suggestions
for additional tools. Issues and contributions are welcome on GitHub.

Thanks,
Wander Lairson Costa