pldd(1)

pldd1

Display dynamic shared objects linked into a process

Usage

pldd pid

pldd option

Overview

The pldd command displays a list of the dynamic shared objects (DSOs) that are linked into the process with the specified process ID (PID). The list includes the libraries that have been dynamically loaded using dlopen(3).

Options

--help
-?

Display a help message and exit.

--usage

Display a short usage message and exit.

--version
-V

Display program version information and exit.

Exit status

On success, pldd exits with the status 0. If the specified process does not exist, the user does not have permission to access its dynamic shared object list, or no command-line arguments are supplied, pldd exists with a status of 1. If given an invalid option, it exits with the status 64.

Versions

Some other systems have a similar command.

Notes

The command

lsof -p PID

also shows output that includes the dynamic shared objects that are linked into a process.

The gdb(1) info shared command also shows the shared libraries being used by a process, so that one can obtain similar output to pldd using a command such as the following (to monitor the process with the specified pid):

$ gdb -ex "set confirm off" \
      -ex "set height 0" \
      -ex "info shared" \
      -ex "quit" \
      -p $pid \
| grep '^0x.*0x';

Examples

$ echo $$;               # Display PID of shell
1143
$ pldd $$;               # Display DSOs linked into the shell
1143:   /usr/bin/bash
linux-vdso.so.1
/lib64/libtinfo.so.5
/lib64/libdl.so.2
/lib64/libc.so.6
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
/lib64/libnss_files.so.2

Releases

7 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 6 times.

  1. 8
  2. 9
  3. 10
  4. 11
  5. 12
  6. 13
  7. Arch

Standards

None.

History

glibc 2.15.

Bugs

From glibc 2.19 to glibc 2.29, pldd was broken: it just hung when executed. This problem was fixed in glibc 2.30, and the fix has been backported to earlier glibc versions in some distributions.

From man-pages 6.19-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.