Program Usage

[Adriann]

Hi,

I don't know exactly how to ask this question, as I am somewhat new to the Linux OS and Suse. So here goes.....

How would I find out what 'sub programs' a particular piece of software is running? For example: SMB4K; what underlying programs/drivers is it using in order for it to function correctly? Or maybe it isn't possible to that on Linux?

Thank you for your time and any advice!

Adriann

PS - Someone asked me and all I could do was a shoulder shrug

[reed9]

You mean like shared libraries? Check out the ldd command.

For example, running it on the firefox binary gives

ldd /usr/bin/firefox
        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff6c716000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f9f85970000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f9f8576c000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f9f85462000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f9f85101000)
        /lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f9f85b8d000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007f9f84e7e000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f9f84c68000)

Finding out which package owns these libraries varies system to system. I don't use Suse so I'm not sure. But in Arch for example, you can do

pacman -Qo /lib/libpthread.so.0
/lib/libpthread.so.0 is owned by glibc 2.13-4

[Adriann]

Hi Reed9,

Thanks for your quick response! Using SMB4K as an example again; If I were to apply ldd /x/x/smb4k, it would then show me everything that is being used to make
smb4k do what it does?

Thanks again!

Adriann