David Douthitt wrote:
>
> Does anyone have a really good understanding of what each system library
> (found in /lib/lib* and /usr/lib/lib*) is for?
>
> I'm still trying to get a good idea of libraries such as libresolv,
> libdb, libdl, libnsl, ...
>
> I think that:
>
> * libresolv is used for "getbyhostname" or whatever else to do name
> lookups
Roger. It's called the Internet Domain Name Server library.
> * libnss* is the "name service switch" which is on the "back end" of
> name lookups
Yup.
> * libnsl appears to be something related to NIS (can be removed??)
NIS is only part of it. RPC is in there too, and so it cs and so
are network directory services and some xti stuff too. It's called
the Network Sevices Library and contains many functions that are used
by various transport protocols.
> * libdl appears to be something to do with using dynamic libraries
If you say so :) I don't know that one.
> * libdb is.... what? (it's part of glibc...)
Libdb is the Berkeley DB database functions that are now maintained
by Sleepycat Software at http://www.sleepycat.com/
dbopen(), dbhash(), weird stuff like that, often used with mysql.
> * libcrypt is for passwords and other use of crypt()
Roger that.
> * libutil (a part of glibc) seems to be generic misc. functions and
> utilities
Login, logout, openpty, blah blah blah.
> * libuuid (a part of e2fsprogs) seems to be some sort of utilities for
> e2fs; can this be removed?
Utilities for managing ext2 filesystem.
> Can someone help out here?
I usually just nm the library and look at the functions or
check out the header file. I apologize for not being able
to provide details about how needed these are to Linux, though.
> The ultimate goal is to remove unnecessary libraries from the system,
> and put them into separate packages - which could be anywhere, including
> on a data disk, boot disk, or CDROM....
I figured at some point, developers would be stripping the necessary
functions out of the libraries to make them smaller.
Take it easy,
Matt
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