On Tue, Oct 26, 1999 at 12:55:04AM +1000, Tony Nugent wrote:
> On Mon Oct 25 1999 at 10:12, "Michael H. Warfield" wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 25, 1999 at 08:54:50AM -0500, Neal J. Gieselman wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > Does anyone know if there exists a binary incompatibility
> > > between Redhat 6.0 and 6.1? This includes both applications
> > > and libraries in both directions.
> > Yeah...
> > You're not going to be able to run binaries compiled
> > specifically for RedHat 6.1 on earlier systems because 6.1 is based
> > on glibc 2.1 while 6.0 was glibc 2.0 (libc 6) and 5.2 was libc 5.
> Your memory doesn't serve you very well... you got it all wrong.
> Redhat 6.0 uses glibc 2.1, redhat 5.x uses glibc 2.0, redhat 4.x used
> libc5 ("elf"), redhat 3.x used a.out.
Quite right. I blew that one... Sigh...
> > Binaries on previous versions should work just fine on later
> > versions subject to kernel changes and interface changes. I've even
[...]
> No, that's not quite right either. Sure, the kernel needs to have the
> support available (compiled in or as modules), but as I said above,
> they'll only run if the legacy run-time libraries are installed onto
> later distributions to allow then to run.
The legacy run-time libraries are, of course, a given. Additionally
there have been certain changes in kernel interfaces and devices that cause
a few programs some problems. Not many, and very specialized, but a few.
Some things are merely being deprecated (cua*) and some things are just being
flat out changed (firewall code). A few things fall in between. Programs
like smbmount are NOT going to work, no matter how may compatibility
libraries you install. The interface between the user space app and the
kernel space module changed radically between 2.0 and 2.2 (but you would
face this on any distro where you upgraded the kernel). Fortunately,
both 6.0 and 6.1 start with 2.2 kernels, so there's no problem there either.
> Using the legacy runtime libraries is something that in general that I
> wouldn't encourage peopleto do. For one thing, it's memory
> consuming... you end up needed to have two sets of runtime libraries
> loaded into memory on mixed systems. Not good for performance, and
> starts to waste system resources.
> > got an old a.out (RedHat 3.x) binary running on a RedHat 6.0 system
> > (don't ask why - it's a long story) although I had to track
> > down the compatibility libraries and install them.
> The a.out compatability libraries were (and still are) included in the
> redhat powertools collection.
Which is where I found them.
> As I say, try to avoid installing them - although it seems that in
> this case you have a reason to do so. (No access to the sources to
> recompile an old binary you still need to use?)
Bingo!
> Cheers
> Tony
Thanks for the corrections for my brain fart!
Mike
--
Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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