prelink is a program which modifies ELF shared libraries and ELF dynamically linked binaries, so that the time which dynamic linker needs for their relocation at startup significantly decreases and also due to fewer relocations the run-time memory consumption decreases too . Such  prelinking information is only used if all its dependant libraries have not changed since prelinking, otherwise programs are relocated normally. This works on Redhat, Oracle Linux, Fedora, CentOS.

It is intended to speed up a system by reducing the time a program needs to startup. This seems to help systems with a large number of libraries, such as KDE/GNOME.

How to run:

As root, run the following command.

# prelink -avmR
[root@unixfoo ~]# which prelink
/usr/sbin/prelink
[root@unixfoo ~]# rpm -qf /usr/sbin/prelink
prelink-0.3.9-2.1
[root@unixfoo ~]# rpm -qi prelink
Name        : prelink                      Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 0.3.9                             Vendor: Fedora
Release     : 2.1                           Build Date: 21 Jun 2007 
Install Date: Tue 02 Sep 2008 01:51:10 PM PDT      Build Host: xxxxx
Group       : System Environment/Base       Source RPM: prelink.src.rpm
Size        : 1681237                          License: GPL
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, 21 Jun 2007 , Key ID dddffee
Summary     : An ELF prelinking utility
Description :
The prelink package contains a utility which modifies ELF shared libraries
and executables, so that far less relocations need to be resolved at runtime
and thus programs come up faster.
[root@unixfoo ~]#

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