What is the LD_PRELOAD trick?

380
votes

I came across a reference to it recently on proggit and (as of now) it is not explained.

I suspect this might be it, but I don't know for sure.

9
clinuxenvironment-variables
Not really an answer so I won't post it as one but... Stephen Kell is using LD_PRELOAD for his liballocs library in this video and if you watch the previous bits you may get a better understanding of how/why. liballocs appears to be being used so other dynamic languages can talk to each other. This talk has some deep internals explained in it. youtu.be/LwicN2u6Dro?t=24m10s - Elijah Lynn

9 Answers

461
votes

If you set LD_PRELOAD to the path of a shared object, that file will be loaded before any other library (including the C runtime, libc.so). So to run ls with your special malloc() implementation, do this:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/my/malloc.so /bin/ls
55
votes

You can override symbols in the stock libraries by creating a library with the same symbols and specifying the library in LD_PRELOAD.

Some people use it to specify libraries in nonstandard locations, but LD_LIBRARY_PATH is better for that purpose.

40
votes

With LD_PRELOAD you can give libraries precedence.

For example you can write a library which implement malloc and free. And by loading these with LD_PRELOAD your malloc and free will be executed rather than the standard ones.

40
votes

As many people mentioned, using LD_PRELOAD to preload library. BTW, you can CHECK if the setting is available by ldd command.

Example: suppose you need to preload your own libselinux.so.1.

> ldd /bin/ls
    ...
    libselinux.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libselinux.so.1 (0x00007f3927b1d000)
    libacl.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libacl.so.1 (0x00007f3927914000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f392754f000)
    libpcre.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3 (0x00007f3927311000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f392710c000)
    /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f3927d65000)
    libattr.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libattr.so.1 (0x00007f3926f07000)

Thus, set your preload environment:

  export LD_PRELOAD=/home/patric/libselinux.so.1

Check your library again:

>ldd /bin/ls
    ...
    libselinux.so.1 =>
    /home/patric/libselinux.so.1 (0x00007fb9245d8000)
    ...
10
votes

LD_PRELOAD lists shared libraries with functions that override the standard set, just as /etc/ld.so.preload does. These are implemented by the loader /lib/ld-linux.so. If you want to override just a few selected functions, you can do this by creating an overriding object file and setting LD_PRELOAD; the functions in this object file will override just those functions leaving others as they were.

For more information on shared libraries visit http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html

4
votes

it's easy to export mylib.so to env:

$ export LD_PRELOAD=/path/mylib.so
$ ./mybin

to disable :

$ export LD_PRELOAD=
3
votes

Here is a detailed blog post about preloading:

https://blog.cryptomilk.org/2014/07/21/what-is-preloading/

2
votes

when LD_PRELOAD is used that file will be loaded before any other $export LD_PRELOAD=/path/lib lib to be pre loaded, even this can be used in programs too

1
votes

Using LD_PRELOAD path, you can force the application loader to load provided shared object, over the default provided.

Developers uses this to debug their applications by providing different versions of the shared objects.

We've used it to hack certain applications, by overriding existing functions using prepared shared objects.