Problems with upgrading from glibc2.1.2 to 2.23

[pmbailey]

Hi.

Wondering if there's anyone out there that can help, or if you can point me in
the direction of someone who can.

I've been trying to upgrade my C library (RH Linux 6.1) which was glibc 2.1.2 up
to glibc 2.2.3.

I upgraded the following software, more or less successfully (I think):

gcc
gdb
make
gettext
bash
autoconf
binutils

All the above software are the latest releases from an Australian mirror of 
gnu.org.

I read up for a couple of days on the library upgrade procedure, and although I
felt a bit uncertain about the installation, it seemed reasonably 
straightforward.

I downloaded the glibc tarball into the /tmp directory and unpacked it.  I
downloaded the Linux threads add-on tarball and unpacked *that* into the newly
created glibc directory.

I checked over the README and INSTALL notes yet again, and ran configure from a
fresh, empty directory (named glibc_hope), and ran the configure script in the
source directory from there (i.e. keeping the source and build directories
separate).

Configure went fine.  I set the prefix to "/usr" and made sure the add-ons
option was set to linux threads (as per the documentation).

I ran make.  No problems at all.

I ran make install.

Problems.

It halted after giving me this:
CC="gcc" /usr/bin/perl scripts/test-installation.pl /tmp/glibc_hope/
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.0/../../../libnss_compat.so: undefined refe
rence to `__niserr2nss_tab'
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.0/../../../libnss_compat.so: undefined refe
rence to `__niserr2nss_count'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
Execution of gcc failed!
The script has found some problems with your installation!
Please read the FAQ and the README file and check the following:
- Did you change the gcc specs file (necessary after upgrading from
  Linux libc5)?
- Are there any symbolic links of the form libXXX.so to old libraries?
  Links like libm.so -> libm.so.5 (where libm.so.5 is an old library) are wrong,
  libm.so should point to the newly installed glibc file - and there should be
  only one such link (check e.g. /lib and /usr/lib)
You should restart this script from your build directory after you've
fixed all problems!
Btw. the script doesn't work if you're installing GNU libc not as your
primary library!
make[1]: *** [install] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/glibc-2.2.3'
make: *** [install] Error 2

OK.  Well, I checked the specs files, and they appeared fine when compared with
the recommendations given in the FAQ.

And checking out the libnss_compat.so link, well, there was libnss_compat.so.1
and 2, so I moved the libnss_compat.so.1 link into a dummy directory and ran
make install again, but it came up with the same error message again.

I don't even know if I've got libc 5 or whatever.  I thought I had glibc, I mean
if the RH distro implemented glibc 2.1.2, why should libc 5 be there?  I mean,
it's not like I'm upgrading from libc 5 to glibc ... or is it?  Or were they
once the same thing?  I'm getting a bit lost here...

Does this mean my Linux box is stuffed, or what?  Where do I go from here?  Is
it even safe to turn the machine off?  (It's a home PC, so I do that from time
to time.)

I'm stuck and don't know where to go from here.  I was afraid of this.

Can anyone out there help?

Regards,

Paul Bailey.