On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 10:31 -0700, Steve Jaffe wrote: > This is exactly it -- /usr/lib/libssl.so points to /lib/libssl.so.4. > > I ought to have realized that /lib is not one of the default library > search directories -- /usr/lib is where the linker will look. The linker looks in lots of places, including both /lib and /usr/lib as far as I'm aware. The difference between these is that the actual .so.X.Y and the .so.X symlink are needed at boot time, by the runtime linker, so they are put in "/" to be available as soon as the system is up. Development files, like libssl.so which is only needed at build time, not runtime, can be put into /usr which is often a separate typically larger, could be remotely mounted via NFS, could be read-only, etc. Anyway, that's the historical reason for the split.
