Can I change 'rpath' in an already compiled binary?

Question

I have an old executable that\'s scheduled for the scrap heap, but it\'s not there yet. It relies on some libs that have been removed from my environment, but I have some st

Answer 1

There is a more universal tool than chrpath called patchelf. It was originally created for use in making packages for Nix and NixOS (packaging system and a GNU/Linux distribution).

In case there is no rpath in a binary (here called rdsamp), chrpath fails:

chrpath -r '$ORIGIN/../lib64' rdsamp 
rdsamp: no rpath or runpath tag found.

On the other hand,

patchelf --set-rpath '$ORIGIN/../lib64' rdsamp

succeeds just fine.