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A usespace transparent ld-linux interpreter and glibc swapper.

2 starsC

Chlibc – A ptrace-based tool to hot-swap glibc and interp in user-space

by gzm55·Apr 18, 2026·2 points·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●●BangerWizardryNiche Gem

Hot-swap glibc via ptrace without root or patching ELF binaries.

Strengths
  • •ptrace interception avoids permanent disk modifications or destructive binary patching entirely.
  • •Zero runtime overhead after initial execve phase unlike PRoot syscall translation.
  • •Native support for x86_64, AArch64, and RISC-V architectures included.
Weaknesses
  • •Linux-only limitation excludes macOS and Windows users from this workflow entirely.
  • •ptrace usage may trigger security alerts or fail in restricted environments.
Target Audience

Systems programmers, Linux developers, DevOps engineers

Similar To

patchelf · PRoot · LD_PRELOAD

Post Description

Hello, I built chlibc, a linux tool to change the system interp and glibc to your custom one.

Normally, running an ELF against a different glibc, you'd use LD_LIBRARY_PATH and patchelf, or use chroot/docker.

chlibc allows you to change the dynamic linker of a process on the fly without patching and root access.

Key Features:

- zero disk modification: no need for patchelf --set-interpreter. - no root required: works entirely in user-space via ptrace - multi-arch: native support for x86_64, AArch64, and RISC-V. - lightweight: unlike PRoot, which intercepts every syscall to translate paths, chlibc only intervenes during the initial execve() phase. Once the loader is swapped, it almost has no runtime overhead.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this tool, thanks!

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