Finding Library Dependencies

Have you ever wondered which libraries are being called by a binary or utility?

The AIX package “freeware.aix.tools.rte” includes the “ldd” binary which shows the shared libraries called by an executable. This example shows the shared libaries called by the ping executable. # /usr/local/bin/ldd /usr/sbin/ping
/usr/lib/libbind.a(shr.o)
/usr/sbin/ping
/usr/lib/libcrypt.a(shr.o)
/usr/lib/libc.a(shr.o)
Remember that some “.o” files are stored with “.a” files. To examine the contents of a “.a” file use the command: ar -tv
E.g.
# ar -tv /usr/lib/libcrypt.a
rwxr-x—   300/1       4638 Mar 28 20:46 2010 shr.o