You would be interested in *removing* library paths if a given *shared* library has embedded paths via the *rpath* feature. Those are added at the time the library is created by the linker. You can remove (or alter) those paths using [`chrpath`][1], e.g., chrpath -d mylibraryfile.so Removing pathnames from the `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` variable also is a possible area of interest; you can do that by string substitution and re-exporting the variable. However, the question does not seem to be concerned with that. There is no variable which acts to cancel out `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`. For *seeing* library dependencies, the mention of `/etc/ld.so.conf.d/` makes it sound as if the platform is only Linux. You can use `ldd` to list dependencies. Aside from OSX, all of the BSDs also support `ldd`. Here is one of the scripts which I use for this purpose: #!/bin/sh # $Id: ldd-path,v 1.1 2007/07/09 19:30:28 tom Exp $ # Edit the output of ldd for the given parameters, yielding only the # absolute pathnames. ldd $* | sed \ -e 's/([^)]*)//g' \ -e 's/^.*=>//' \ -e 's/[ ][ ]*//g' \ -e '/^$/d' But (addressing a comment), there is no portable mechanism for telling the loader to *ignore* an existing path. The GNU ld documentation gives a summary of what is sought, and the order in the description of the [`-rpath`][2] option. These items conclude the list: >- The default directories, normally `/lib` and `/usr/lib`. >- For a native linker on an ELF system, if the file `/etc/ld.so.conf` exists, the list of directories found in that file. Further reading - [Can I change 'rpath' in an already compiled binary?][3] - [RPATH, RUNPATH, and dynamic linking ][4] [1]: http://linux.die.net/man/1/chrpath [2]: https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/ld/Options.html#Options [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13769141/can-i-change-rpath-in-an-already-compiled-binary [4]: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/rpath/