How few a files does it take to load a program on Linux?
- by BCS
The (hypothetical for now) situation is the user of my system is going to be given a chunk of C code and needs my system to compile and run it in a chroot sandbox that is generated on the fly and I want to require the fewest files in the box as possible. I'm only willing to play with compiler and linker settings (e.g. static link everything I can expect to be able to find) and make some moderate restriction on what the code can expect use (e.g. they can't use arbitrary libs).
The question is how simple can I get the sandbox. Clearly I need the executable, but what about an ELF loader and a .so for the system calls? Can I dump either of them and is there something else I'll need?