ldso

[Craig Jackson]

Erik Bågfors wrote:
> It looks like to don't know the difference between ldpreload and the
> normal ld-stuff.
> 
> My guess.
> 
> What you want to do is run your self compiled applications that needs
> some self compiled library.  If so, all you need to do is put the
> path(s) to the directories where you have the libraries in
> /etc/ld.so.conf. ld.so.conf provides the system with paths to
> directories where it can look for libraries.
> 
> Preload on the other hand is to load a specific library before running
> the app.  The use for this is most often that you want to replace a
> specific function in a library with a function you've written
> yourself. Then you put your replacement in a specific library that you
> build yourself and then you preload it.
> 
> Now to the real 1000 dollar question, why did you build these
> applications yourself instead of just installing them with apt?
> 

Thanks for your reply. I got into the habit of compiling my own software 
many years ago when the Debian packages were quite crude and Red Hat was 
suffering from library hell and this is the way it must be done on 
Solaris64. Now, I don't even think about it. My software prefix is 
/usr/local. That way, I can restore to one directory and forget the rest 
except for minimal configuration files. Also I can strip out the many 
features I don't want that make the binary so big keeping the few I 
want. Last, I don't like looking at a bunch of configuration files for 
Exim. One does the trick. Lastly, I find when I compile the software, 
all the little problems that Debian takes care of don't get taken care 
of. This keeps me on my toes, making me aware of changes I would not 
ordinarily become aware of.

I like Ubuntu very much; Debian has been my sole OS for years, having 
used it many times in different jobs and at home and at my present job 
extensively. I used Ubuntu because amd64 is officially supported. Now 
for my $0.02; here's a list of software I have chosen to compile instead 
of apt-get some for a reason, some from habit:

Exim
Mysql
Openvpn
Apache
PHP
Ntp
Mailutils
Pure-ftpd
Clamav
Courier-imap

A few programs I once compiled myself but find that Debian package now 
suffices:

Ssh
Squid
Openldap
BerkeleyDB
Spamassassin
wu-imap