gistfile1.txt

> I am trying to patch an executable with does not link to Lua (script library) yet includes the source. The function luaL_newstate is the 
> one wanted, which is present in the mach-o and I can see the instruction address and the displacement to the function.

so you have a binary which does not link to lua_whatever.so ? ok...

> I have tried numerous methods of inserting the hook displacement for the displacement in the binary of interest. I would assume it requires 
> using execve to run the binary of interest yet that will overwrite the address space of the patcher. I have tried fork -> ptrace 
> PT_TRACE_ME execve and then trying dlsym(RTLD_DEFAULT, "luaL_newstate"); after a signal with the intention of overwriting memory with the 
> hook. I tested this by not including the Lua lib in the patcher and it does not find the symbol.

ok so i'm not sure i totally understand what you are asking. yes exec* will overwrite the address space. what you need to do to patch a
running executable is ptrace attach to it and create a small trampoline like injectso does. use this trampoline to call dlopen and load
the library that is not linked to the binary.

have you read the source for injectso?