Build OpenSSL with RPATH?

Question

I have Ubuntu 14.04. It came with openssl 1.0.1f. I want to install another openssl version (1.0.2) and I want to compile it by myself.

I configure it as follows:

LDFLAGS='-Wl,--export-dynamic -L/home/myhome/programs/openssl/i/lib 
-L/home/myhome/programs/zlib/i/lib'

CPPFLAGS='-I/home/myhome/programs/openssl/i/include 
-I/home/myhome/programs/zlib/i/include'

./config --prefix=/home/myhome/programs/openssl/i \
zlib-dynamic shared --with-zlib-lib=/home/myhome/programs/zlib/i/lib \
--with-zlib-include=/home/myhome/programs/zlib/i/include

make 

make install

After install, when i check the binary with ldd openssl, and the result is:

...
libssl.so.1.0.0 => /home/myhome/programs/openssl/i/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0 (0x00007f91138c0000)
libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => /home/myhome/programs/openssl/i/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 (0x00007f9113479000)
...

which looks fine. But when I check ldd libssl.so, the result is:

...
libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 (0x00007fac70930000)
...

It still uses the system version of libcrypto. I tried different ways to build, but result is always stays the same.

My question is how to configure the build in a way, that it can hardcode all binary and library dependencies of shared libraries without using LD_LIBRARY_PATH, or anything like that.

Answer 1

My question is how to configure the build in a way, that it can hardcode all binary and library dependencies of shared libraries without using LD_LIBRARY_PATH, or anything like that.

OpenSSL supports RPATH's out of the box for BSD targets (but not others). From Configure:

# Unlike other OSes (like Solaris, Linux, Tru64, IRIX) BSD run-time
# linkers (tested OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD) "demand" RPATH set on
# .so objects. Apparently application RPATH is not global and does
# not apply to .so linked with other .so. Problem manifests itself
# when libssl.so fails to load libcrypto.so. One can argue that we
# should engrave this into Makefile.shared rules or into BSD-* config
# lines above. Meanwhile let's try to be cautious and pass -rpath to
# linker only when --prefix is not /usr.
if ($target =~ /^BSD\-/)
    {
    $shared_ldflag.=" -Wl,-rpath,\$(LIBRPATH)" if ($prefix !~ m|^/usr[/]*$|);
    }

The easiest way to do it for OpenSSL 1.0.2 appears to be add it as a CFLAG:

./config -Wl,-rpath=/usr/local/ssl/lib

The next easiest way to do it for OpenSSL 1.0.2 appears to be add a Configure line and hard code the rpath. For example, I am working on Debian x86_64. So I opened the file Configure in an editor, copied linux-x86_64, named it linux-x86_64-rpath, and made the following change to add the -rpath option:

"linux-x86_64-rpath",   "gcc:-m64 -DL_ENDIAN -O3 -Wall -Wl,-rpath=/usr/local/ssl/lib::
-D_REENTRANT::-Wl,-rpath=/usr/local/ssl/lib -ldl:SIXTY_FOUR_BIT_LONG RC4_CHUNK DES_INT DES_UNROLL:
${x86_64_asm}:elf:dlfcn:linux-shared:-fPIC:-m64:.so.\$(SHLIB_MAJOR).\$(SHLIB_MINOR):::64",

Above, fields 2 and 6 were changed. They correspond to $cflag and $ldflag in OpenSSL's builds system.

Then, Configure with the new configuration:

$ ./Configure linux-x86_64-rpath shared no-ssl2 no-ssl3 no-comp \
    --openssldir=/usr/local/ssl enable-ec_nistp_64_gcc_128

Finally, after make, verify the settings stuck:

$ readelf -d ./libssl.so | grep -i rpath
 0x000000000000000f (RPATH)              Library rpath: [/usr/local/ssl/lib]
$ readelf -d ./libcrypto.so | grep -i rpath
 0x000000000000000f (RPATH)              Library rpath: [/usr/local/ssl/lib]
$ readelf -d ./apps/openssl | grep -i rpath 
 0x000000000000000f (RPATH)              Library rpath: [/usr/local/ssl/lib]

---

Once you perform make install, then ldd will produce expected results:

$ ldd /usr/local/ssl/lib/libssl.so
    linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007ffceff6c000)
    libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => /usr/local/ssl/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 (0x00007ff5eff96000)
    ...

$ ldd /usr/local/ssl/bin/openssl 
    linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007ffc30d3a000)
    libssl.so.1.0.0 => /usr/local/ssl/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0 (0x00007f9e8372e000)
    libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => /usr/local/ssl/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 (0x00007f9e832c0000)
    ...

---

OpenSSL has a Compilation and Installation on its wiki. This has now been added to the wiki at Compilation and Installation | Using RPATHs

Answer 2

It's 2019, and OpenSSL might have changed a little, so I'll describe how I solved this, on the odd chance someone else might find it useful (and in case I ever need to figure out this command line argument again for myself).

I wanted to build OpenSSL in a way that would cross-compile (using docker containers, because I'm dealing with freakishly old Linux kernels yet modern compilers), yet provide an install that did not depend upon absolute paths, as would be the case using rpath as I've seen described in jww's answer here.

I found I can run OpenSSL's Configure script in this way to achieve what I want (from a bash prompt):

./Configure linux-x86 zlib shared -Wl,-rpath=\\\$\$ORIGIN/../lib

This causes the generated Makefile to build the executables and the shared objects in a way that makes the loader look for dependencies first in "./../lib" (relative to the location of the executable or the shared object), then in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc. That wacky combination of characters properly gets past the bash command line, the script, and the Makefile combinations to create the -rpath argument according to how the linker requires it ($ORIGIN/../lib).

(Obviously, choose the other options that make sense to you.. the key here is in the -Wl,-rpath=\\\$\$ORIGIN/../lib option).

So, if I called ./Configure with a prefix of '--prefix=/opt/spiffness', and later decided to rename 'spiffness' to 'guttersnipe', everything will still work correctly, since the paths are relative rather than absolute.

I have not tried passing the argument into ./config to see if it works there since my use case was a bit special, but I suspect it would. If I were not attempting to cross-compile with dockerized containers, I would prefer using ./config to ./Configure, as it does a decent enough job of examining the current environment to see what kind of binaries to create.

I hope this is useful.