[CLUE-Tech] Building Kernel w/Debian

[Matt Gushee]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 11:57:50AM -0600, Randy Arabie wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to figure out how to back out of this problem.  When I use dselect, libc6
> 2.2.5-11.2 is listed in my Req base section!  libc6 2.2.5-6 is not available for me 
> through dselect.
> 
> This is my first experience with debain, and I would like it to be a good one.  I'm
> not that familiar with the debain package management system, so I don't know how to 
> resolve problems like this.
> 
> Can I just force an uninstall of the libc6-2.2.5-11.2 package then install the 
> libc6-2.2.5-6 version?  I have not compiled anything (obviously, since I don't have
> the basic headers!), so it seems this would be possible.

I think that would be a very bad idea (see below).

> I suppose dselect won't
> just let me uninstall something as fundemental as libc6....in fact, would anything
> work afterwards if I were to do that?

You could do it manually with dpkg, but you would break most user-level
programs on your system, including 'cat', 'ls', and dpkg itself:

  bash-2.05a$ ldd `which dpkg`
          libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4001c000)
          /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

Actually, I thought ls and cat were normally statically linked. But
they're dynamically linked with libc6 on my system, as is bash.

I guess you would still have the old libc6 in memory until you shut
down, but this seems like a very risky course of action. I learned about
that back when I tried to manually upgrade from RedHat 4.2 to 5.0 (the
first distro based on glibc). Surprise, surprise: everything stopped
working!

> Can I manually download the libc6-2.2.5-6 
> package and force install if *over* the newer version?

Probably, and it *might* be safe. On the other hand, if your system is
fully functional as is, and the strange version hasn't messed up all
your dependencies, you're probably better off just leaving it, and
installing the matching dev package.
> 
> Also, should I be doing a bug report on this?  At this point, I don't feel like I have
> enough information to provide usefull feedback, except to say that the version of libc6
> I have is listed as a required base package.

Dunno. I recently installed Woody also, and this didn't happen to me. I
also used dselect for my initial installation.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee at havenrock.com           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)