dlopen(3C)

DESCRIPTION

dlopen is one of a family of routines that give the user direct access to the dynamic linking facilities. dlopen makes a shared object specified by a file available to a running process. A shared object may specify other objects that it ``needs'' in order to execute properly. These dependencies are specified by DT_NEEDED entries int the .dynamic section of the original object. Each needed object may, in turn, specify other needed objects. All such objects are loaded along with the original object as a result of the call to dlopen.

A successful dlopen call returns to the process a handle which the process may use on subsequent calls to dlsym and dlclose. This value should not be interpreted in any way by the process.

file is used to construct a pathname to the object file. If file contains a slash character, the file argument itself is used as the pathname. Otherwise a series of directories is searched for file. First, any directories specified by the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH are searched. Next, any directories specified by SHLIB_PATH are searched. Then, any directories specified by a DT_RPATH entry in the .dynamic section of the original program object are searched. Finally, the directories /usr/lib/pa20_64 and usr/ccs/lib/pa20_64 are searched.

If the value of file is 0, dlopen provides a handle on a ``global symbol object.'' This object provides access to the symbols from an ordered set of objects consisting of the original a.out, all of the objects that were loaded at program startup along with the a.out, and all objects loaded using a dlopen operation along with the RTLD_GLOBAL flag. As the latter set of objects can change during execution, the set identified by handle can also change dynamically.

Only a single copy of an object file is brought into the address space, even if dlopen is invoked multiple times in reference to the file, and even if different pathnames are used to reference the file.

When a shared object is brought into the address space of a process, it may contain references to symbols whose addresses are not known until the object is loaded. These references must be relocated before the symbols can be accessed. The mode parameter governs when these relocations take place and may have the following values:

Any object loaded by dlopen that requires relocations against global symbols can reference the symbols in the original a.out, any objects loaded at program startup, from the object itself as well as any other object included in the same dlopen invocation, and any objects that were loaded in any dlopen invocation that specified the RTLD_GLOBAL flag. To determine the scope of visibility for the symbols loaded with a dlopen invocation, the mode parameter should be bitwise or'ed with one of the following values:

If neither RTLD_GLOBAL nor RTLD_LOCAL are specified, the default is RTLD_LOCAL.

If a file is specified in multiple dlopen invocations, mode is interpreted at each invocation. Note, however, that once RTLD_NOW has been specified, all relocations will have been completed, rendering any further RTLD_NOW operations redundant and any further RTLD_LAZY operations irrelevant. Similarly note that once RTLD_GLOBAL has been specified, the object will maintain the RTLD_GLOBAL status regardless of any previous or future specification of RTLD_LOCAL, so long as the object remains in the address space (see dlclose(3C)).

Symbols introduced into a program through calls to dlopen may be used in relocation activities. Symbols so introduced may duplicate symbols already defined by the program or previous dlopen operations. To resolve the ambiguities such a situation might present, the resolution of a symbol reference to a symbol definition is based on a symbol resolution order. Two such resolution orders are defined: load and dependency ordering. Load order establishes an ordering among symbol definitions using the temporal order in which the objects containing the definitions were loaded, such that the definition first loaded has priority over definitions added later. Load ordering is used in relocation processing. Dependency ordering uses a ``breadth-first'' order starting with a given object, then all of its dependencies, then any dependents of those, iterating until all dependencies are satisfied. With the exception of the global symbol object obtained via a dlopen operation on a file with a value 0, dependency ordering is used by the dlsym function. Load ordering is used in dlsym operations on the global symbol object.

When an object is first made accessible via dlopen, it and its dependent objects are added in dependency order. Once all objects are added, relocations are performed using load order. Note that if an object and its dependencies have been loaded by a previous dlopen invocation or on startup, the load and dependency order may yield different resolutions.

The symbols introduced by dlopen operations and available through dlsym are those which are ``exported'' as symbols of global scope by the object. For shared objects, such symbols will typically be those that were specified in (for example) C source code as having extern linkage. For a.out's, only a subset of externally visible symbols are typically exported: specifically those referenced by the shared objects with which the a.out is linked. The exact set of exported symbols for any shared object or the a.out can be controlled using the linker (see ld(1)).

MULTITHREAD USAGE

This routine is thread-safe.

RETURN VALUE

If file cannot be found, cannot be opened for reading, is not a shared object, or if an error occurs during the process of loading file or relocating its symbolic references, dlopen returns NULL. More detailed diagnostic information is available through dlerror.

WARNINGS

The environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH and SHLIB_PATH should contain a colon-separated list of directories, in the same format as the PATH variable (see sh(1)). LD_LIBRARY_PATH and SHLIB_PATH will be ignored if the process' real user id is different from its effective user id or its real group id is different from its effective group id (see exec(2)).

Use caution when building shared libraries with external library dependencies. Any library that contains Thread Local Storage (TLS) should not be used as a dependency. If a dependent library contains TLS, and it is not loaded during program startup (that is, not linked against the executable), the dynamic loader fails to perform the operation.

SEE ALSO

cc(1), ld(1), sh(1), exec(2), dlclose(3C), dlerror(3C), dlsym(3C).