How to get current library path

Question

I have a plugin ( .so file), that is dynamically loaded. In the same folder with the .so file I have some images. One function the plugin must implement is to return the paths of the images.

How may I get the absolute path of the .so from itself in C++ (or C)?

I know the issue can be solved easily from the executable (the images are in the same folder as the .so ), but unfortunately I don't have access to its source code.

Answer 1

On Linux, /proc/self/maps will list the full path of every shared object currently loaded. Per the proc.5 man page :

 /proc/[pid]/maps 

A file containing the currently mapped memory regions and their access permissions. See mmap(2) for some further information about memory mappings.

...

The format of the file is:

  address perms offset dev inode pathname 00400000-00452000 r-xp 00000000 08:02 173521 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon 00651000-00652000 r--p 00051000 08:02 173521 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon 00652000-00655000 rw-p 00052000 08:02 173521 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon 00e03000-00e24000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [heap] 00e24000-011f7000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [heap] ... 35b1800000-35b1820000 r-xp 00000000 08:02 135522 /usr/lib64/ld-2.15.so 35b1a1f000-35b1a20000 r--p 0001f000 08:02 135522 /usr/lib64/ld-2.15.so 35b1a20000-35b1a21000 rw-p 00020000 08:02 135522 /usr/lib64/ld-2.15.so 35b1a21000-35b1a22000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 35b1c00000-35b1dac000 r-xp 00000000 08:02 135870 /usr/lib64/libc-2.15.so 35b1dac000-35b1fac000 ---p 001ac000 08:02 135870 /usr/lib64/libc-2.15.so 35b1fac000-35b1fb0000 r--p 001ac000 08:02 135870 /usr/lib64/libc-2.15.so 35b1fb0000-35b1fb2000 rw-p 001b0000 08:02 135870 /usr/lib64/libc-2.15.so ... f2c6ff8c000-7f2c7078c000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack:986] ... 7fffb2c0d000-7fffb2c2e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack] 7fffb2d48000-7fffb2d49000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vdso] 

If you know the base name of your shared object, you can parse the contents of /proc/self/maps and find the full path.

To guard against the name of the shared object being changed, you can also use the address of a symbol in your shared object to select the proper line from /proc/self/maps .