[CLUE-Tech] newbie question about libgtk

[Matt Gushee]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 08:49:47AM -0700, Charlie Oriez wrote:
> a number of routines, including but not limited to the harddrake-text 
> routine in my boot, try to use  /usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0 which is a 
> symbolic link to libgtk-1.2.so.0.9.1, also in /usr/lib

'harddrake-text'? What the bejeezus is that?

M.J. Hammel has given some good advice, but I get the sense there may
be something else going on.

> when i do a  ls -lact libgtk-1.2* the names of both modules are 
> blinking in red on the symbolic module line.  Methinks that is 
> relevant, since that is unique to this module.

Could you clarify what you mean by 'module'?

> What am I seeing, and what is the fix?

If I'm not mistaken, blinking red indicates a dangling symlink -- i.e.,
the real file that the symlink points to either doesn't exist or isn't
in the expected location. Then again, I don't pay much attention to
those colors, so I could be wrong.

If there is a problem with your shared libraries, two commands that
can help you pinpoint it are 'file' and 'ldd'. Examples:

  $ file /usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0.9.1

will tell you if that shared library is a real file or a symlink, and
if the latter, what it references (which could be another symlink).

  $ ldd /usr/bin/program-that-uses-shared-libs

will tell you what shared libraries that program depends on, and where
they are on your system (or 'not found').

As for why this is happening: if you're using only packages provided
by your Linux vendor (is it Mandrake?), it could conceivably be an
error in packaging. I wouldn't assume that right away, though --
especially since it's GTK: considering how many popular packages
depend on it, thousands of people would probably have noticed the
error already and complained loudly. But you might take a look on the
vendor's website for 'updates' or 'errata' and see if there are any
references to this problem.

If you've installed packages from another distribution or built them
from source, then you probably missed something in the way of config-
uration, such as running /sbin/ldconfig. 
-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee at havenrock.com
http://www.havenrock.com/