Manual: ldd

ldd(1)						   General Commands Manual					      ldd(1)

NAME
       ldd - print shared object dependencies

SYNOPSIS
       ldd [option ...] file ...

DESCRIPTION
       ldd  prints  the shared objects (shared libraries) required by each program or shared object specified on the command
       line.  An example of its use and output is the following:

	   $ ldd /bin/ls;
	       linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffcc3563000)
	       libselinux.so.1 => /lib64/libselinux.so.1 (0x00007f87e5459000)
	       libcap.so.2 => /lib64/libcap.so.2 (0x00007f87e5254000)
	       libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f87e4e92000)
	       libpcre.so.1 => /lib64/libpcre.so.1 (0x00007f87e4c22000)
	       libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f87e4a1e000)
	       /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00005574bf12e000)
	       libattr.so.1 => /lib64/libattr.so.1 (0x00007f87e4817000)
	       libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f87e45fa000)

       In the usual case, ldd invokes the standard dynamic linker (see ld.so(8)) with the  LD_TRACE_LOADED_OBJECTS  environ‐
       ment  variable set to 1.	 This causes the dynamic linker to inspect the program's dynamic dependencies, and find (ac‐
       cording to the rules described in ld.so(8)) and load the objects that satisfy those dependencies.   For	each  depen‐
       dency,  ldd  displays  the location of the matching object and the (hexadecimal) address at which it is loaded.	(The
       linux-vdso and ld-linux shared dependencies are special; see vdso(7) and ld.so(8).)

   Security
       Be aware that in some circumstances (e.g., where the program specifies an ELF interpreter  other	 than  ld-linux.so),
       some  versions of ldd may attempt to obtain the dependency information by attempting to directly execute the program,
       which may lead to the execution of whatever code is defined in the program's ELF interpreter, and perhaps  to  execu‐
       tion  of the program itself.  (Before glibc 2.27, the upstream ldd implementation did this for example, although most
       distributions provided a modified version that did not.)

       Thus, you should never employ ldd on an untrusted executable, since this may result in  the  execution  of  arbitrary
       code.  A safer alternative when dealing with untrusted executables is:

	   $ objdump -p /path/to/program | grep NEEDED;

       Note, however, that this alternative shows only the direct dependencies of the executable, while ldd shows the entire
       dependency tree of the executable.

OPTIONS
       --version
	      Print the version number of ldd.

       --verbose
       -v     Print all information, including, for example, symbol versioning information.

       --unused
       -u     Print unused direct dependencies.	 (Since glibc 2.3.4.)

       --data-relocs
       -d     Perform relocations and report any missing objects (ELF only).

       --function-relocs
       -r     Perform  relocations  for	 both  data  objects and functions, and report any missing objects or functions (ELF
	      only).

       --help Usage information.

BUGS
       ldd does not work on a.out shared libraries.

       ldd does not work with some extremely old a.out programs which were built before ldd support was added  to  the	com‐
       piler  releases.	  If you use ldd on one of these programs, the program will attempt to run with argc = 0 and the re‐
       sults will be unpredictable.

SEE ALSO
       pldd(1), sprof(1), ld.so(8), ldconfig(8)

Linux man-pages 6.17					 2026-02-08						      ldd(1)