Question

I’m puzzled. I have 2 versions of libssl.so in /lib:
/lib/libssl.so.4 and /lib/libssl.so.6

Here is a stripped down minimal example — I’m linking “nothing” with libssl — the result being that it links to libssl.so.4. What determines this?

 $ g++ -o foo.so -shared -lssl

 $ ldd foo.so |grep ssl
 libssl.so.4 => /lib/libssl.so.4 (0xf7f04000)

Answer 1

The option -lssl instructs the linker to look for the file named libssl.so or libssl.a. If all you have are libssl.so.4 and libssl.so.6, then you would have a linker error.

Look for a symlink called “libssl.so” somewhere in your library directories, likely in /lib.