What Is ld.so and How Do I Get It?

This article is from the Frequently Asked Questions for Linux, the Free/Open Source UNIX-like operating system kernel that runs on many modern computer systems. Maintained by David C. Merrill with numerous contributions by others. (v1.0).
ld.so is the dynamic library loader. Each binary using shared libraries used to have about 3K of start-up code to find and load the shared libraries. Now that code has been put in a special shared library, /lib/ld.so, where all binaries can look for it, so that it wastes less disk space, and can be upgraded more easily.

ld.so can be obtained from http://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/GCC/ and mirror sites. The latest version at the time of writing is ld.so.1.9.5.tar.gz.

/lib/ld-linux.so.1 is the same thing for ELF ("What's all this about ELF? ") and comes in the same package as the a.out loader.

Posted in: ld.so