[linux] ERROR: ld.so: object LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored

I am using ubuntu 12.04. Every time I start my bash terminal and every time when I finish typing a command(and press enter) , I get this message:

ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/liblunar-calendar-preload.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

It is weird. So what is the environment variable LD_PRELOAD used for? And what is the going on behind the scene?

Thanks.

Thanks for the responses. I think I've solved the problem just now.

Since LD_PRELOAD is for setting some library proloaded, I check the library that ld preloads with LD_PRELOAD, one of which is "liblunar-calendar-preload.so", that is not existing in the path "/usr/lib/liblunar-calendar-preload.so", but I find a similar library "liblunar-calendar-preload-2.0.so", which is a difference version of the former one.

Then I guess maybe liblunar-calendar-preload.so was updated to a 2.0 version when the system updated, leaving LD_PRELOAD remain to be "/usr/lib/liblunar-calendar-preload.so". Thus the preload library name was not updated to the newest version.

To avoid changing environment variable, I create a symbolic link under the path "/usr/lib"

sudo ln -s liblunar-calendar-preload-2.0.so liblunar-calendar-preload.so

Then I restart bash, the error is gone.

If you want to make sure that the library is loaded if and only if the program lunar-calendar-gtk is launched, you can apply this:

You set the environment variable per command by prefixing the command with it:

$ LD_PRELOAD="liblunar-calendar-preload.so" printenv "LD_PRELOAD"
liblunar-calendar-preload.so
$ printenv "LD_PRELOAD"
$

You can then choose to put this in a shell script and make lunar-calendar-gtk a symlink to this shell script, replaceing the original referencee. This effectively makes sure that the library is loaded everytime the original application is executed.

You will have to rename the original lunar-calendar-gtk to something else, which might not be too intriguing as it possibly may cause issues with uninstallation and upgrading. However, I found it useful with a former version of Skype.

You can check /etc/ld.so.preload file content

I fix it by:

echo "" > /etc/ld.so.preload

It means the path you input caused an error. In your LD_PRELOAD command, modify the path like the error tips:

/usr/lib/liblunar-calendar-preload.so