[geeks] broken software

der Mouse mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA
Fri Dec 2 11:35:56 CST 2005


> The clock applet won't load.  Checking its library dependencies [...]

> A selection of wierd items the clock "depends" on:

All of the explanations below are pure guesswork, but they seem
plausible to me.

> 	libgnome-keyring.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0 (0xb75d1000)
> Why does the clock applet need access to keyrings?

So it can speak to the server through a secured channel, using crypto
for authentication instead of MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 - and possibly for
conidentiality too.

> 	libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb7264000)
> Why does it need compression libraries?

So it's capable of speaking to the server over a compressed channel,
suitable for use over a modem (a la lbx).

> 	libexpat.so.0 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0 (0xb6f68000)
> 	libssl.so.0 => /usr/lib/libssl.so.0 (0xb6f37000)
> 	libcrypto.so.0 => /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0 (0xb6e36000)
> Why does a clock need crypto stuff, and expat?

Crypto stuff, see above.  expat, well, I don't know what it is. :)

> 	libasound.so.2 => /usr/lib/libasound.so.2 (0xb6beb000)
> The clock applet does not use any sound, so why is the sound library
> needed?

Because the Xlib version you're using has sound extensions, and in the
Brave New World of shared libraries, you need to pull in everything
used by anything in a library you pull in, not anything used by the
fractions you use of that library.  (This is one of the loses of shared
libraries: the granularity level of code inclusion is the library,
rather than the file in the library.)

> 	libkrb5support.so.0 => /usr/lib/libkrb5support.so.0 (0xb6b14000)
> Kerberos?  For a clock?

Because your Xlib supports Kerberized X connections.

> But surely there are ways to prevent this.

Sure.  "Scrap Gnome" seems like a good one to me, though admittedly
that's probably in part because a lot of Gnome's choices are
anathematical to me.

Linking with static (.a) libraries rather than dynamic (.so) libraries
will give you back the file-level inclusion granualrity that might help
some, but probably not a lot.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B



More information about the geeks mailing list