I am rapidly becoming very proficient in linux, but I have come across something that I cant seem to solve myself.

I'm running slackware 9.1 or my laptop which utilizes a 4200rpm hard drive. Yeah, tell me about it.

Anyway, on every start-up it goes through this one process which makes up about 1/3 of total boot time. I see this line while it is running:

basically, I'm wondering the following:

1)What exactly does this do?
2)Is it necessary to run it at every boot?
3) If not, how can I go about removing it?

ldconfig is definitely necessary and should be left to run at boot time.

ldconfig updates the locations of shared libraries on the system.

For more information, run the command:

man ldconfig

...to view the ldconfig man page.

After reading the man page, so you have a better idea of what it's doing and how it works, you may want to check its config file (/etc/ld.so.conf, by default) to see if any of the directories listed there do not exist or are otherwise unreachable at the point during the boot that the command runs. If ldconfig can't locate or access the directories, this could be the cause of the delay.

Also: I've noticed that, in 9.1, ldconfig does seem to take longer on boot than it did in previous slackware releases (8.1, 9.0). I haven't investigated this yet myself.

I don't have ldconfig left on at boot time. I run it after I installed stuff....so meeh.

Yeag, from reading the man files, It really seems that I only need to run ldconfig after something new is installed. I think I'll try and remove it from the boot sequence and see how it works.

let us know how it works, I have the same issue with my system, boot takes ages because of ldconfig.

Hmm.. I cant seem to find anywhere in my boot scripts where there is a mention of ldconfig. Ninja Cow, or anyone else, where can ldconfig be remover from the boot sequence?

You'll find in the /etc/rc.d/rc.M file.

Be sure to comment out all three lines of the "If,then/echo/command" statement.

Obviously, it doesn't HAVE to be run on every boot. But, if you don't, you'll need to remember to run it after every install, update, upgrade, recompile, etc.

For my purposes, I prefer to let it run at boot, just to be sure. That few seconds of extra boot time is not a critical issue for me. Especially since I don't reboot that often.

Thanks

Yes, since I have my system set-up the way I like it, I rarely install / recompile anything, so running ldconfig is no big deal for me.

Also, on a slow hard drive like I have, it take a long time compared to the rest of the boot process.

Thanks again.