The Library Path

In order for the JVM to find shared libraries and shared objects, they must be located in a directory contained in the library path.

The JVM looks for the library path by inquiring a system dependent environment variable. The below table shows the most common ones:

Operating System	Library file extension	Environment Variable
AIX	*.so	LIBPATH
HP-UX Itanium	*.so	LD_LIBRARY_PATH
HP-UX PA-RISC	*.sl	SHLIB_PATH
Linux	*.so	LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Mac OS X	*.jnlib	DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
SCO	*.so	LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Solaris	*.so	LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Windows	*.dll	PATH