ERROR: ld.so: object LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored

Question

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.

Answer 1

The linker takes some environment variables into account. one is LD_PRELOAD

from man 8 ld-linux:

LD_PRELOAD           A whitespace-separated list of additional,  user-specified,  ELF           shared  libraries  to  be loaded before all others.  This can be           used  to  selectively  override  functions   in   other   shared           libraries.   For  setuid/setgid  ELF binaries, only libraries in           the standard search directories that are  also  setgid  will  be           loaded. 

Therefore the linker will try to load libraries listed in the LD_PRELOAD variable before others are loaded.

What could be the case that inside the variable is listed a library that can't be pre-loaded. look inside your .bashrc or .bash_profile environment where the LD_PRELOAD is set and remove that library from the variable.