| NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | The Linux Programming Interface |
USELIB(2) Linux Programmer's Manual USELIB(2)
uselib - load shared library
#include <unistd.h>
int uselib(const char *library);
The system call uselib() serves to load a shared library to be used by the
calling process. It is given a pathname. The address where to load is found
in the library itself. The library can have any recognized binary format.
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set
appropriately.
In addition to all of the error codes returned by open(2) and mmap(2), the
following may also be returned:
EACCES The library specified by library does not have read or execute
permission, or the caller does not have search permission for one of
the directories in the path prefix. (See also path_resolution(7).)
ENFILE The system limit on the total number of open files has been reached.
ENOEXEC
The file specified by library is not an executable of known type, e.g.,
does not have the correct magic numbers.
uselib() is Linux-specific, and should not be used in programs intended to be
portable.
uselib() was used by early libc startup code to load the shared libraries with
names found in an array of names in the binary.
Since libc 4.3.2, startup code tries to prefix these names with "/usr/lib",
"/lib" and "" before giving up. In libc 4.3.4 and later these names are
looked for in the directories found in LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and if not found
there, prefixes "/usr/lib", "/lib" and "/" are tried.
From libc 4.4.4 on only the library "/lib/ld.so" is loaded, so that this
dynamic library can load the remaining libraries needed (again using this
call). This is also the state of affairs in libc5.
glibc2 does not use this call.
ar(1), gcc(1), ld(1), ldd(1), mmap(2), open(2), dlopen(3), capabilities(7),
ld.so(8)
This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2005-01-09 USELIB(2)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface