I have been having several adventures with trying to
install netscape into Debian 2.1. The first and most
obvious problem was that a library
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.so.4 wasn't being found when
the system went to load netscape.
I confirmed that the library was at the above path
actually it was a link to /usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.so.4.10 .
Richard Adams posted:
>Judging by the error (if thats the only one, then i would say /usr/X11R6/lib
>is defined in /etc/ld.so.conf and that you have rerun ldconfig.
well it is defined in /etc/ld.so.conf and so I reran ldconfig
but that didn't solve the problem. It still wouldn't be found.
But then I found that there is an environment variable in bash
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/X11R6/lib:..." which would cause the complaint
about libXpm.so.4 to go away. Netscape now would attempt to
load but would promptly seg fault which suggests that David Fox
might have the right of it:
>Aha. Further evidence that the Netscape in question is libc5-based
>and not glibc-based. This may not be a problem, as you may have
>gotten a Netscape that was built against libc5, which (should)
>still run OK. On the other hand, your output from ldd gives me
>the feeling that it may be trying to combine both glibc and
>libc5, which (AFAIK) can't be done.
So now a new list of questions:
1. why is there /etc/ld.so.conf as well as the environment variable
LD_LIBRARY_PATH? And should one be enough and why can't some
libraries be found just working from ld.so.conf? Is it a
question of libc5 versus glibc?
2. I put the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment in my /etc/profile:
# /etc/profile: system-wide .profile file for bash(1).
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:/usr/local/netscape"
MOZILLA_HOME=/usr/local/netscape
PS1="\\$ "
export PATH PS1 MOZILLA_HOME
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/X11R6/lib:/usr/lib/libc5-compat:/lib/libc5-compat:/usr/X11
R6/lib/Xaw3d"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
But it apparently is not being picked up with bash starts up. Is there
some still another switch to make bash read the /etc/profile? To test
all of this I simply "source /etc/profile". But still it should be being
picked up at login according to my reading of the bash man pages.
3. The seg faults I've experienced haven't produced the ever so common
"core" files. Why not. How do you debug if you don't get a core
file when something fails?
At this point Debian is being more of a challenge that I had ever
suspected. I did get 2.0 up but wanted to upgrade to 2.1 so I could
use cdroast. I'm beginning to think very fondly of RedHat. And my
wife's asking just how many more months will it take for me to get
Linux installed :) I'm trying to come up with a decent response which
is difficult after midnight.
Special thanks to those who posted.
Jonathan
