How do I reimplement (or wrap) a syscall function on Linux?

Question

Suppose I want to completely take over the open() system call, maybe to wrap the actual syscall and perform some logging. One way to do this is to use LD_PRELOAD to load a (user-made) shared object library that takes over the open() entry point.

The user-made open() routine then obtains the pointer to the glibc function open() by dlsym()ing it, and calling it.

The solution proposed above is a dynamic solution, however. Suppose I want to link my own open() wrapper statically. How would I do it? I guess the mechanism is the same, but I also guess there will be a symbol clash between the user-defined open() and the libc open().

Please share any other techniques to achieve the same goal.

Answer 1

You can use the wrap feature provided by ld. From man ld:

--wrap symbol Use a wrapper function for symbol. Any undefined reference to symbol will be resolved to __wrap_symbol.

Any undefined reference to __real_symbol will be resolved to symbol.

So you just have to use the prefix __wrap_ for your wrapper function and __real_ when you want to call the real function. A simple example is:

malloc_wrapper.c:

#include <stdio.h>
void *__real_malloc (size_t);

/* This function wraps the real malloc */
void * __wrap_malloc (size_t size)
{
    void *lptr = __real_malloc(size);
    printf("Malloc: %lu bytes @%p\n", size, lptr);
    return lptr;
}

Test application testapp.c:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
    free(malloc(1024)); // malloc will resolve to __wrap_malloc
    return 0;
}

Then compile the application:

gcc -c malloc_wrapper.c
gcc -c testapp.c
gcc -Wl,-wrap,malloc testapp.o malloc_wrapper.o -o testapp

The output of the resulting application will be:

$ ./testapp
Malloc: 1024 bytes @0x20d8010

Answer 2

Symbols are resolved by the linker in the order you list them on the command line so if you listed your library before the standard library you'd have precidence. For gcc you'd need to specify

gcc <BLAH> -nodefaultlibs <BLAH BLAH> -lYOUR_LIB <OTHER_LIBS>

This way your libraries would be searched and found first.