On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, Tim Rightnour wrote:

> If you wanted a system-wide LD_LIBRARY_PATH couldn't you set it
> in /etc/profile?

That doesn't help csh users much. :-)  If we change the search order to
mimic Solaris, it also means that you're overriding that RPATH, rather than
supplementing it if ld.elf_so fails to find it in the expected place.  This
is probably an important distinction.

Personally, from a purist's perspective, I'd much rather have something
like the HP-UX chatr(1), as pointed out by Guenther Grau and elaborated on
by Giles Lean.  This makes it possible for the admin to "retarget" the
library search path in a very direct fashion, including set[ug]id
executables.  Experience with LD_LIBRARY_PATH-induced lossage on
HP-UX/Solaris and headaches with a.out on NetBSD both give me misgivings
about methods of globally overriding the library search path.

Having said all that, however, the realist in me recognizes that people are
used to ld.so.conf and will probably not appreciate it being ripped out
from under them.

--scott

PS - Frank's suggestions to mimic the Solaris search path order and to put
ld.so.conf at the end of the search path list seem to be good and
desirable.