Can't access shared objects when using sudo

Question

I've installed a program, Player, and am now trying to run the player command. The player requires a .cfg file as input, e.g

player create.cfg

I notice that I am able to run the above command fine as a normal user, but when I run it as root,

sudo player create.cfg

I get the following error:

error while loading shared libraries: libplayerdrivers.so.3.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

My question is, why would the command work when running it as a normal user, but not when running it as a root user? I would understand if it were the other way round. What gives?

More details

I know the error usually means the LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not set right. The shared object in question is in /usr/local/lib, so I put the command

EXPORT LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

in my .bashrc file and sourced it. But running the player command with sudo still fails to find it.

Doing ls -l /usr/local/lib | grep libplayerdrivers gives the following output:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 Jun 27 16:34 libplayerdrivers.so -> libplayerdrivers.so.3.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Jun 27 16:28 libplayerdrivers.so.3.0 -> libplayerdrivers.so.3.0.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3042066 Jun 27 16:28 libplayerdrivers.so.3.0.2

Answer 1

sudo overwrites LD_LIBRARY_PATH, because it is a security risk.