Re: LD_LIBRARY_PATH

On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 01:40:09PM -0500, Robert B. Easter wrote:
> See:
> man 8 ld.so
> man 8 ldconfig
>
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH is generally harmless. Set inside a user's .profile, it

Coming from a linux world?

hawkeye:/export/home/b015414$ ls /etc/ld*
/etc/ld*: No such file or directory

Linux acts somewhat differently with respect to LD_* variables when
compared to other systems.

> Recently, I was starting to run two versions of postgres on the same
> computer, so I had to take the lib out of /etc/ld.so.conf and start putting
> it into user .profiles' LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Some users will use one pg lib

This is probably the hardest way of doing this.

You, as an admin, should never try to maintain the users .profiles.
Too many things can go wrong. User can mis-edit it. User can accidently
erase it. User can change shell and not even use a .profile.

Instead, put that stuff into the system profiles (/etc/profile,
/etc/csh.login). Either base it upon primary group, for instance, or
a couple of list of files or something. But this is definitely asking
for administrative nightmares.

Just think if you have to move all users from one version to another. You
would prefer to edit each person's .profile rather than one central one?

Speaking of administrative nightmares, did I read correctly that 7.1
now users -R by default when linking? Ack! Doesn't that make it nearly
impossible for an administrator to move libraries around as necessary?
I'm thinking especially if trying to use a pre-packaged binary, and
trying to put it into a different location. I.e., maybe a shared /opt
style directory structure where the path may include arch/os information
that doesn't match what the original builder used.

mrc
--
Mike Castle Life is like a clock: You can work constantly
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www.netcom.com/~dalgoda/ and be right at least twice a day. -- mrc
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