Descriptions Last checked against version &glibc-contversion;. Program file descriptions catchsegv catchsegv can be used to create a stack trace when a program terminates with a segmentation fault. gencat gencat generates message catalogues. getconf getconf displays the system configuration values for filesystem specific variables. getent getent gets entries from an administrative database. glibcbug glibcbug creates a bug report about glibc and and mails it to the bug email address. iconv iconv performs character set conversion. iconvconfig iconvconfig creates fastloading iconv module configuration file. ldconfig ldconfig configures the dynamic linker run time bindings. ldd ldd prints the shared libraries required by each program or shared library specified on the command line. lddlibc4 lddlibc4 assists ldd with object files. locale locale is a Perl program which tells the compiler to enable (or disable) the use of POSIX locales for built-in operations. localedef localedef compiles locale specifications. mtrace Not yet available. nscd nscd is a daemon that provides a cache for the most common name service requests. nscd_nischeck nscd_nischeck checks whether or not secure mode is necessary for NIS+ lookup. pcprofiledump pcprofiledump dumps information generated by PC profiling. pt_chown pt_chown sets the owner, group and access permission of the slave pseudo terminal corresponding to the master pseudo terminal passed on file descriptor `3'. This is the helper program for the `grantpt' function. It is not intended to be run directly from the command line. rpcgen rpcgen generates C code to implement the RPC protocol. rpcinfo rpcinfo makes an RPC call to an RPC server. sln sln symbolically links dest to source. It is statically linked, needing no dynamic linking at all. Thus sln is useful to make symbolic links to dynamic libraries if the dynamic linking system for some reason is nonfunctional. sprof sprof reads and displays shared object profiling data. tzselect tzselect asks the user for information about the current location and outputs the resulting time zone description to standard output. xtrace xtrace traces execution of program by printing the currently executed function. zdump zdump is the time zone dumper. zic zic is the time zone compiler. Library file descriptions ld.so ld.so is the helper program for shared library executables. libBrokenLocale Used by software, such as Mozilla, to solve broken locales. libSegFault libSegFault is a segmentation fault signal handler. It tries to catch segfaults. libanl libanl is an asynchronous name lookup library. libbsd-compat libbsd-compat provides the portability needed in order to run certain programs in Linux. libc, libc_nonshared These files constitute the main C library. The C library is a collection of commonly used functions in programs. This way a programmer doesn't need to create his own functions for every single task. The most common things like writing a string to the screen are already present and at the disposal of the programmer. The C library (actually almost every library) comes in two flavors: a dynamic and a static one. In short, when a program uses a static C library, the code from the C library is copied into the executable file. When a program uses a dynamic library, the executable will not contain the code from the C library, but instead a routine that loads the functions from the library at the time the program is run. This means a significant decrease in the file size of a program. The documentation that comes with the C library describes this in more detail, as it is too complicated to explain here in one or two lines. libcrypt libcrypt is the cryptography library. libdl libdl is the dynamic linking interface library. libg libg is a runtime library for g++. libieee libieee is the IEEE floating point library. libm libm is the mathematical library. libmcheck libmcheck contains code run at boot. libmemusage libmemusage is used by memusage to help collect information about the memory usage of a program. libnsl libnsl is the network services library. libnss_compat, libnss_dns, libnss_files, libnss_hesiod, libnss_nis, libnss_nisplus The basic idea is to put the implementation of the different services offered to access the databases in separate modules. This has some advantages: contributors can add new services without adding them to GNU C library, the modules can be updated separately, the C library image is smaller. libpcprofile Code used by the kernel to track CPU time spent in functions, source code lines, and instructions. libpthread The POSIX threads library. libresolv Functions in this library provide for creating, sending, and interpreting packets to the Internet domain name servers. librpcsvc Functions in this library provide miscellaneous RPC services. librt Functions in this library provide most of the interfaces specified by the POSIX.1b Realtime Extension. libthread_db Functions is this library are useful for building debuggers for multi-threaded programs. libutil Contains code for "standard" functions used in many different Unix utilities.