uselib(2) System Calls Manual uselib(2)
NAME
uselib - load shared library
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
[[deprecated]] int uselib(const char *library);
DESCRIPTION
The system call uselib() serves to load a shared library to be used by
the calling process. It is given a pathname. The address where to load
is found in the library itself. The library can have any recognized bi-
nary format.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
In addition to all of the error codes returned by open(2) and mmap(2),
the following may also be returned:
EACCES The library specified by library does not have read or execute
permission, or the caller does not have search permission for one
of the directories in the path prefix. (See also path_resolu-
tion(7).)
ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been
reached.
ENOEXEC
The file specified by library is not an executable of a known
type; for example, it does not have the correct magic numbers.
STANDARDS
Linux.
HISTORY
This obsolete system call is not supported by glibc. No declaration is
provided in glibc headers, but, through a quirk of history, glibc before
glibc 2.23 did export an ABI for this system call. Therefore, in order
to employ this system call, it was sufficient to manually declare the
interface in your code; alternatively, you could invoke the system call
using syscall(2).
In ancient libc versions (before glibc 2.0), uselib() was used to load
the shared libraries with names found in an array of names in the bi-
nary.
Since Linux 3.15, this system call is available only when the kernel is
configured with the CONFIG_USELIB option.
SEE ALSO
ar(1), gcc(1), ld(1), ldd(1), mmap(2), open(2), dlopen(3), capabili-
ties(7), ld.so(8)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 uselib(2)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:15:47 CET 2025.