# Overview

## What is the Lumina server?

The Lumina server is a "functions metadata" repository.

It is a place where IDA users can **push**, and **pull** such metadata, to ease their reverse-engineering work: metadata can be extracted from existing projects, and re-applied effortlessly to new projects, thereby reducing (sometimes dramatically) the amount of time needed to analyze binaries.

## Public vs. Private Lumina

IDA supports both **Public** and **Private** Lumina servers.

The **Public Lumina** server, maintained and operated by Hex-Rays, is shared across the entire IDA community. It enables collaborative function recognition by a global knowledge base contributed by users worldwide.

Alternatively, you can deploy a **Private Lumina** server. Available as an add-on for IDA Pro subscriptions, Private Lumina provides the same rapid function recognition capabilities as Public Lumina, but within your controlled infrastructure.

With Private Lumina, your organization’s knowledge base remains accessible only to authorized users: IDA Pro instances configured with the Private Lumina add-on and connected to your self-hosted server.

## Accessing the Lumina Server

Lumina features are accessible from the [**Lumina** menu](/core/user-interface/reference/menu-bar-actions/common-actions-4.md) in the IDA main menu bar.

## **Functions metadata**

The Lumina server associates "function metadata" to functions, by means of a (`md5`) *hash* of those functions: whenever it wants to push information to, or pull information from the server, IDA will first have to compute hashes of the functions it wants to retrieve metadata for, and send those hashes to the Lumina server.

Similarly, when IDA **push**es information to the Lumina server, it will first compute hashes for the corresponding functions, extract the metadata corresponding to those from the `.idb` file, and send those hash+metadata pairs to the server.

### **Metadata contents**

Metadata about functions can include:

* function name
* function address
* function size
* function prototype
* function \[repeatable] comments
* instruction-specific \[repeatable] comments
* anterior/posterior (i.e., "extra") comments
* user-defined "stack points" in the function’s frame
* the function frame description and stack variables
* instructions operands representations

#### **Pushing & overriding metadata**

When a user pushes metadata about a function whose `md5` hash isn’t present in the database, the Lumina server will simply create a new record for it.

However, when a user pushes metadata about a function whose `md5` hash (and associated metadata) is already present in the database, the Lumina server will attempt to "score" the quality of the old metadata and the quality of the new metadata. If the score of the new metadata is higher, the new function metadata will override the previous one.

{% hint style="info" %}
When a user asks IDA to push *all* functions to the Lumina server, IDA will automatically skip some functions: those that still have a "dummy" name (e.g., `sub_XXXX`), or that are below a certain size threshold (i.e., 32 bytes) will be ignored.
{% endhint %}

#### **Metadata history**

The Lumina server retains a history of the metadata associated to functions. Using the `lc` utility, it is possible to dig into that history, and view changes (detailed diffs, too.)

### **File contents**

It’s worth pointing out that when pushing metadata to the Lumina server, IDA will not push the binary file itself. Only the following metadata about the file itself will be sent:

* the name of the input file
* the name of the IDB file
* a `md5` hash of the input file

The Lumina server cannot therefore be used as a backup/repository for binary files & IDBs (that is the role of the `vault_server`)

### Supported architectures

Lumina in IDA Pro is currently available only for binaries compiled for the following architectures:

* PC (x86/x64)
* ARM
* PPC
* MIPS
* RISC-V

For unsupported architectures, the Lumina menu is not shown in IDA, and pushing or pulling metadata is not available.


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