A utility to set DT_RUNPATH and the interpreter of an elf binary.
In contrast to patchelf, it does not try to move or resize existing sections.
Instead it searches for a symbol in .dynstr, that is likely to be unused. Currently that can be either
__gmon_start___ITM_deregisterTMCloneTable
It will corrupt this symbol and replace it with a new DT_RUNPATH.
When using patchelf, the elf will be modified quite a bit.
Existing sections like .dynstr and .dynamic get appended as a whole to the end of the new elf.
Most of the time this is the best solution, since you can append arbitrary entries to the new section.
However, I frequently had the following problems with patchelf:
- Symbols are not detected by gdb after patching
- The patched sections of the elf have to be mapped in a new section after the last section of the original elf. This offsets the heap and could be unwanted.
- It increases the size of the binary, which can cause confusion.
I made patchelfdd, to work around those problems.