Can I use my own ld.so.cache?

Question

ldconfig has two interesting options:

-f conf
      Use conf instead of /etc/ld.so.conf.
-C cache
      Use cache instead of /etc/ld.so.cache.

I tried copying /etc/ld.so.conf to my own home directory, and edited it to include paths to my local libraries e.g. /home/syockit/local/usr/lib etc. And ran

ldconfig -f /home/syockit/ld.so.conf -C /home/syockit/ld.so.cache

and subsequently, to confirm that the libraries are cached, I ran

ldconfig -f /home/syockit/ld.so.conf -C /home/syockit/ld.so.cache -p | less

and it does include all my libraries on top of also including system libraries.

Now, I want to have the default linker use these two. But in man ld.so, I see no mention of being able to use custom .conf or .cache. So what's the point of the above two options of ldconfig then?

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 15 '14 at 18:06

10

I think the answer to your question is no, although you can accomplish the same thing other ways.

in man ld.so, I see no mention of being able to use custom .conf or .cache

True, but there is mention of $LD_LIBRARY_PATH and and --library-path, the former being more generally useful.

what's the point of the above two options of ldconfig then?

So you can create a cache without overwriting the system one, and without having to use the system confs.

answered Jan 15 '14 at 18:06

goldilocks

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...just for the heck of it? Or is it for system forensics? – syockit Jan 15 '14 at 18:37
2

It could be for a system image or a chroot environment, etc. – goldilocks Jan 15 '14 at 19:08

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 16 '14 at 01:43

/etc/ld.so.conf is only read by ldconfig (the cache generation program), not by ld.so (the dynamic loader). You can change the location of the configuration file if you want to generate a cache that's different from the system default.

/etc/ld.so.cache is read by ld.so and you can't make it read from a different location. It can be nonetheless useful to pass a different output location to ldconfig. The most common use case is probably chroot environments. You can use ldconfig -r /some/root to run ldconfig on an alternate root, and put the output wherever you want (inside or outside that root). You'll need to either emit the output at /some/root/etc/ld.so.cache or copy it there later. There are other fairly obscure use cases, for example if you want to run ldconfig as an unprivileged user (who cannot write to /etc/ld.so.cache) and then move the file into place later.

Can I use my own ld.so.cache?

2 Answers2