Red hat vs Ubuntu compile and assembly Problem(Book reference)

Question

Can you recommend me OS mentioned in Shellcoder's Handbook because I'm having frequent issues on running ELF files mentioned there(See the errors below). I know that to overcome those error I have to enter commands or arguments but I did that too and I'm still not getting same output as in the book like on the assembly level.

I'm running one file to demonstrate on ubuntu 4.15.0-106-generic(testing environment I'm using) and a lot of the thing on assembly level is different.

This following dissimilarity will help you understand my problem. The below code is from the book is focused on int 0x80 instruction.

CODE:

main()
{
    exit(0);
}

This is the o/p from book:

[slap@0day root] gdb exit
GNU gdb Red Hat Linux (5.3post-0.20021129.18rh)
Copyright 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you
are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain
conditions. Type “show copying” to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type “show warranty” for
details.
This GDB was configured as “i386-redhat-linux-gnu”...
(gdb) disas _exit
Dump of assembler code for function _exit:
0x0804d9bc <_exit+0>: mov 0x4(%esp,1),%ebx
0x0804d9c0 <_exit+4>: mov $0xfc,%eax
0x0804d9c5 <_exit+9>: int $0x80
0x0804d9c7 <_exit+11>: mov $0x1,%eax
0x0804d9cc <_exit+16>: int $0x80
0x0804d9ce <_exit+18>: hlt
0x0804d9cf <_exit+19>: nop
End of assembler dump.

This is o/p from my testing enviroment(ubuntu 4.15.0-106-generic 16.04.1):

GNU gdb (Ubuntu 7.11.1-0ubuntu1~16.5)7.11.1
This GDB was configured as "i686-linux-gnu"
gdb-peda$ disas exit
Dump of assembler code for function exit@plt:
   0x080482e0 <+0>:     jmp    DWORD PTR ds:0x804a00c
   0x080482e6 <+6>:     push   0x0
   0x080482eb <+11>:    jmp    0x80482d0
End of assembler dump.

As you can see there is no int 0x80 instruction on testing environment unlike from book.

Errors :

stack-smashing detected --- to overcome this error I used (-fno-stack-protector) and it works sometimes only.

or

Also Segmentation fault (core dumped) --- I'm getting this error when its not even mentioned in the book I know its the Linux version I'm using which must be patched for things from book.

So can you recommend me environment/OS mentioned in the book or is there any way to compile the binaries mentioned in the book to run on my testing environment(Linux 4.15.0-106-generic #107~16.04.1-Ubuntu)?

EDIT:

command using to compile elf file:

gcc -m32 -fno-stack-protector exit.c -o exit

also tried this,

gcc -static -m32 -fno-stack-protector exit.c -o exit 

Adding -static gave this in assembly:

gdb-peda$ disas exit
Dump of assembler code for function exit:
   0x0804e440 <+0>:     sub    esp,0x10
   0x0804e443 <+3>:     push   0x1
   0x0804e445 <+5>:     push   0x80eb070
   0x0804e44a <+10>:    push   DWORD PTR [esp+0x1c]
   0x0804e44e <+14>:    call   0x804e320 <__run_exit_handlers>
End of assembler dump.

Answer 1

In the book output, you show that they disassemble _exit:

This GDB was configured as “i386-redhat-linux-gnu”...
(gdb) disas _exit

But in your experiment, you disassemble exit (notice the missing leading underscore):

This GDB was configured as "i686-linux-gnu"
gdb-peda$ disas exit

Those are two separate functions, so make sure you're using _exit. This answer explains the difference between the two: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/5375/90691

Also, in your output I noticed exit@plt; that "plt" stands for "Procedure Linkage Table", and it's part of resolving dynamically-linked symbols. If you compile with -static, that'll cause the compiler to statically link (instead of dynamically link) you program, so you won't end up with that level of indirection. This answer provides a more detailed explanation: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/256852/90691

If you don't compile with -static and try to disassemble the program from the book, you might see:

(gdb) disassemble _exit
No symbol "_exit" in current context.

That's because nothing in your program referenced the symbol _exit. Compiling with -static may resolve that problem. If not, you could modify the program to call _exit instead of exit.

Finally, i386-redhat-linux-gnu vs i686-linux-gnu. The former is for a 386 processor; the latter is for a 686 processor. Both are 32-bits, so with any luck you should be fine using the 686 toolchain.