Linking against an old version of libc to provide greater application coverage

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Work out which symbols in your executable are creating the dependency on the undesired version of glibc.

$ objdump -p myprog
...
Version References:
  required from libc.so.6:
    0x09691972 0x00 05 GLIBC_2.3
    0x09691a75 0x00 03 GLIBC_2.2.5

$ objdump -T myprog | fgrep GLIBC_2.3
0000000000000000      DF *UND*  0000000000000000  GLIBC_2.3   realpath

Look within the depended-upon library to see if there are any symbols in older versions that you can link against:

$ objdump -T /lib/libc.so.6 | grep -w realpath
0000000000105d90 g    DF .text  0000000000000021 (GLIBC_2.2.5) realpath
000000000003e7b0 g    DF .text  00000000000004bf  GLIBC_2.3   realpath

We’re in luck!

Request the version from GLIBC_2.2.5 in your code:

#include <limits.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

__asm__(".symver realpath,realpath@GLIBC_2.2.5");

int main () {
    realpath ("foo", "bar");
}

Observe that GLIBC_2.3 is no longer needed:

$ objdump -p myprog
...
Version References:
  required from libc.so.6:
    0x09691a75 0x00 02 GLIBC_2.2.5

$ objdump -T myprog | grep realpath
0000000000000000      DF *UND*  0000000000000000  GLIBC_2.2.5 realpath

For further information, see http://web.archive.org/web/20160107032111/http://www.trevorpounds.com/blog/?p=103.

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