@b0rk The contents of the symbolic link -- the name of the file that the link points to -- are packed inside the inode itself, and you actually saw them in your hexdump, you called out "you can see [this] says 'python3' in it". Look carefully at the end of that line of the hexdump and the beginning of the next line and you'll see that the string embedded in the inode is in fact "python3.9".

(You're probably now wondering where the name _of_ the symbolic link is. That name isn't stored in the inode at all! It's only stored in the _directory entry_. If you use debugfs to inspect the contents of the directory /usr/bin you should be able to find the string "python3" paired with a reference to inode 6206.)

(Depending on the filesystem, very long symbolic links may get stored in content blocks rather than in the inode. I don't know how that works with the filesystem you're using.)

@b0rk You don't see a bunch of `stat` system calls to work out the paths of the shared libraries because that information is precalculated and stored in `/etc/ld.so.cache`, which it opens on line 4 of your full strace report. I am not sure if this is documented anywhere. I only know about it myself because I help out with glibc development sometimes.

And finally, I don't know _exactly_ what the system calls on lines 71 through 83 of the full strace are for, but I know some of it:

- `arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, ...)` is setting the x86 register %fs, which can be used to hold a pointer (Linux uses it to point to data that varies from thread to thread, like `errno`) but for complicated historical reasons only the kernel can _set_ that pointer.

- The long string of `mprotect`s are making parts of the shared libraries read-only. These parts have to be writable while the dynamic linker is working, but after it's done setting everything up they can be read-only. This is a security feature, but I only vaguely understand why (it has to do with making it harder to exploit buffer overflow bugs).

- The `munmap` on line 81 pairs with the `mmap` on line 6. The dynamic linker is done with `/etc/ld.so.cache` at this point.

- I don't know what `set_tid_address` and `set_robust_list` are for.

@zwol @b0rk set_tid_address is used to inform the kernel of a place where the thread ID is stored. AFAIK it has exactly one use which is that you can use it for futexes (which pthread is built on). set_robust_list is also for futexes–namely it’s a list of them.