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Re:Never run ldd on unknown executables by cryptonector on Sunday July 23, 2023 @11:17PM (#36842750)
> The way dynamic linking is done on UNIX-like systems has always seemed odd and a bit of an afterthought to me, and that explains why --- the actual loader in the OS kernel itself knows nearly nothing about dynamic linking. Instead it "redirects" execution to a loader (which is itself not that different from any other static binary) to do that.

This makes it much easier to evolve the system because kernel-land programming is harder than user-land programming. The trade-off is that the user-land run-time loader has its own bootstrapping complexity to deal with.

Re:Never run ldd on unknown executables by userbinator on Monday July 24, 2023 @12:02AM (#36843008)
On Windows, the loader for usermode runs in usermode too; but every executable, by design, doesn't get to choose what to use for its loader.
Re:Never run ldd on unknown executables by cryptonector on Monday July 24, 2023 @12:40AM (#36843170)
> but every executable, by design, doesn't get to choose what to use for its loader.

Sure it does: it can load whatever it wants however it wants once main() gets to run.