Jim Diamond <Jim.Diamond@nospam.AcadiaU.ca> wrote:
> If you look in your /etc/ld.so.conf you will probably see the line
> /usr/local/lib

Yes, it really does make sense to have /usr/local directories searched
first. The directory /usr/local usually contains different kinds of custom
upgrades and addons. If you install a custom library upgrade you want to
use that instead of the default system library.

A program called ldd can be used to see how different binaries link to
dynamic libraries. Example:

$ldd /usr/bin/amixer
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4002d000)
libasound.so.2 => /usr/lib/libasound.so.2 (0x40051000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x400f7000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x400fa000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4014b000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

(The above is on an old Slackware installation).

regards Henrik
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Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> wrote:
> Most likely because /usr/local comes before /usr in the $PATH environment
> variable. It does on my system, for both regular users and for root.

For LIBRARIES it is the order in /etc/ld.so.conf (or environment
variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH) that determines the order in which ld.so
searches for (shared) libraries (and LD_LIBRARY_PATH comes _before_
the default cache, configured by /etc/ld.so.conf, as normally you'd
want to add those libraries before cq instead OF the default ones).

> Use 'echo $PATH' to view yours.

PATH is only for "real" executables (I know, Shared Objects also
have execute permission bits on, but they don't contain a "main"
program).
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