The dynamic linker, also known as rtld, Runtime ld, or ld.so, arranges to bring shared objects (load objects) into an executing application. The two primary areas where rtld is active are:
Program startup – At program startup, rtld runs first and dynamically loads all shared objects specified at link time. These preloaded shared objects might include libc.so, libC.so, or libX.so. Use ldd(1) to find out which shared objects a program will load.
Application requests– The application uses the function calls dlopen(3) and dlclose(3) to dynamically load and unload shared objects or executables.
dbx uses the term load object to refer to a shared object (.so) or executable (a.out). You can use the loadobject command to list and manage symbolic information from load objects.