Question

I’m on a Linux environment and I need to make a program that retrieves some data that is placed in one of the sections of its executable file. So, how to get a pointer to a section of a program (by its name) from within itself?

I know it’s possible to use elf_getdata() passing the index of the section as argument to get and Elf_Data struct and one of the fields of this struct is d_buf, which is a pointer to the actual data. However, it seems the elf_getdata() function makes a copy of the section data from the file to the memory and that’s not what I want. I want a pointer to the data the has been loaded to the memory in loading time.

So, guys, any idea?

Answer 1

Actually, using libelf, it’s possible to use the Elf64_Shdr struct (for 64-bit systems) to get a pointer to a section, because the sh_addr field do points to the actual adress where the section will be loaded in runtime. So, it can be used as a pointer. This way, it’s not even necessary to use the elf_getdata() function to retrieve a Elf_Data struct.

Since what I want to do is a library which other object files can be linked against, my code may have a function which opens the executable file itself to make use of some libelf features, so that it can read data from the main file sections, as follows:

// A global variable which stores the executable file name
extern const char *__progname;

void retrieve_data() {
  int fd;       // File descriptor for the executable ELF file
  char *section_name, path[384];
  size_t shstrndx;

  Elf *e;           // ELF struct
  Elf_Scn *scn;     // Section index struct
  Elf64_Shdr *shdr;     // Section struct

  // Create the full path of the executable
  getcwd(path, 255);
  strcat(path, "/");
  strncat(path, __progname, 127);

  if (elf_version(EV_CURRENT) == EV_NONE)
    errx(EXIT_FAILURE, "ELF library iinitialization failed: %s", elf_errmsg(-1));

  if ((fd = open(path, O_RDONLY, 0)) < 0)
    err(EXIT_FAILURE, "open \"%s\" failed", path);

  if ((e = elf_begin(fd, ELF_C_READ, NULL)) == NULL)
    errx(EXIT_FAILURE, "elf_begin() failed: %s.", elf_errmsg(-1));

  // Retrieve the section index of the ELF section containing the string table of section names
  if (elf_getshdrstrndx(e, &shstrndx) != 0)
    errx(EXIT_FAILURE, "elf_getshdrstrndx() failed: %s.", elf_errmsg(-1));

  scn = NULL;

  // Loop over all sections in the ELF object
  while ((scn = elf_nextscn(e, scn)) != NULL) {
    // Given a Elf Scn pointer, retrieve the associated section header
    if ((shdr = elf64_getshdr(scn)) != shdr)
      errx(EXIT_FAILURE, "getshdr() failed: %s.", elf_errmsg(-1));

    // Retrieve the name of the section
    if ((section_name = elf_strptr(e, shstrndx, shdr->sh_name)) == NULL)
      errx(EXIT_FAILURE, "elf_strptr() failed: %s.", elf_errmsg(-1));

    // If the section is the one we want... (in my case, it is one of the main file sections)
    if (!strcmp(section_name, "Section name")) {
      // We can use the section adress as a pointer, since it corresponds to the actual
      // adress where the section is placed in the virtual memory
      struct data_t * section_data = (struct data_t *) shdr->sh_addr;

      // Do whatever we want

      // End the loop (if we only need this section)
      break;
    }
  }

  elf_end(e);
  close(fd);
}