[ WARNING: Long message. Details of problem first, then some ranting ]
[ about Debian and a request for distribution comments after. I hope ]
[ everyone will find time to help me out and/or read my rants. :) ]
Hi everyone,
Today I noticed that gcc-3.0 is segfaulting. I found this out when I
attempted to recompile my kernel and it failed sa simula pa lang. I did an
strace of gcc and got the following:
jijo@gusi:~$ strace gcc-3.0 -V
execve("/usr/bin/gcc-3.0", ["gcc-3.0", "-V"], [/* 21 vars */]) = 0
uname({sys="Linux", node="gusi", ...}) = 0
brk(0) = 0x805b37c
old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1,
0) = 0x40015000
open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 1, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40016000
close(3) = 0
munmap(0x40016000, 1) = 0
--- SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) ---
+++ killed by SIGSEGV +++
It's only now, BTW, that I have an /etc/ld.so.preload. Previous straces
showed that gcc was segfaulting right after it couldn't find ld.so.preload
so I installed the ld.so.preload-manager and libsafe packages.
(I even put some wrong lines in the file and had to search the 'Net for
how to overwrite it because everything would not run due to the invalid
line in ld.so.preload, it's a good thing I had bash still open, and so
"echo > /etc/ld.so.preload" worked. Ahhh...)
The last time that I'm sure gcc worked fine was when I built the kernel
I'm running on. /boot/bzImage-2.4.6-ac1 was last changed Fri Jul 6
18:50:07 2001. A 'find -cnewer /boot/bzImage-2.4.6-ac1' in the
/var/cache/apt/archives/ directory spews out a lot of files: packages I
downloaded and installed after I made the 2.4.6-ac1 kernel. It's a pretty
long list, but I looked at it and don't know which one could possible have
caused what seems to me to be some linked library error (libc6 in this
case I presume since ldso isn't used by libc6 apps). Please pardon the
bandwidth use as I paste the list here. I'm desperate and need some
additional opinions about which of these is the culprit:
./libmhash2_0.8.9-3_i386.deb
./hostname_2.09_i386.deb
./libomapi3_1%3a9.1.3-1_i386.deb
./wv_0.6.2-1_i386.deb
./grep_2.4.2-2_i386.deb
./base-files_2.2.10_i386.deb
./zip_2.30-3_i386.deb
./libpspell2_0.11.2-2.3_i386.deb
./gnupg_1.0.6-2_i386.deb
./minicom_1.83.1-3_i386.deb
./vim-rt_5.8.003-1_all.deb
./debhelper_3.0.39_all.deb
./fetchmail_5.8.12-1_i386.deb
./dpkg-dev_1.9.16_all.deb
./manpages-dev_1.38-1_all.deb
./adduser_3.39_all.deb
./whois_4.5.7_i386.deb
./bsdutils_1%3a2.11g-4_i386.deb
./util-linux_2.11g-2_i386.deb
./nano_1.0.3-2_i386.deb
./sharutils_1%3a4.2.1-6_i386.deb
./finger_0.17-4_i386.deb
./diff_2.7-25_i386.deb
./ed_0.2-19_i386.deb
./libsafe_1.3-6_i386.deb
./cpio_2.4.2-36_i386.deb
./vim_5.8.003-1_i386.deb
./textutils_2.0-7_i386.deb
./mawk_1.3.3-6_i386.deb
./minicom_1.83.1-4_i386.deb
./sed_3.02-8_i386.deb
./libltdl3_1.4-1_i386.deb
./liblwres1_1%3a9.1.3-1_i386.deb
./mount_2.11g-4_i386.deb
./syslinux_1.62-5_i386.deb
./bind9-doc_1%3a9.1.3-1_all.deb
./aspell_0.32.6-3.2_i386.deb
./lynx_2.8.3-1.5_i386.deb
./manpages_1.38-1_all.deb
./libgpmg1_1.19.3-6_i386.deb
./libgd1_1.8.4-4_i386.deb
./traceroute_1.4a12-4_i386.deb
./gettext-base_0.10.38-2_i386.deb
./libaspell8_0.32.6-3.2_i386.deb
./libwmf0_0.1.21-1_i386.deb
./mawk_1.3.3-7_i386.deb
./gnupg-doc_2000.10.01-1_all.deb
./iptraf_2.4.0-2_i386.deb
./netpbm_2%3a9.10-4_i386.deb
./bsdmainutils_5.20010615-1_i386.deb
./dpkg_1.9.16_i386.deb
./rsync_2.4.6-1_i386.deb
./libdb3_3.2.9-11_i386.deb
./csh_20010613-1_i386.deb
./bind9_1%3a9.1.3-1_i386.deb
./partial
./bsdutils_1%3a2.11g-2_i386.deb
./ncftp_2%3a3.0.3-5_i386.deb
./debconf_0.9.74_all.deb
./lftp_2.3.11-1_i386.deb
./libisc3_1%3a9.1.3-1_i386.deb
./ld.so.preload-manager_0.3.3-1_i386.deb
./screen_3.9.9-2_i386.deb
./man-db_2.3.19-1_i386.deb
./libdns4_1%3a9.1.3-1_i386.deb
./dnsutils_1%3a9.1.3-1_i386.deb
./courier-base_0.34.1-2_i386.deb
./slang1_1.4.4-3_i386.deb
./xlibs_4.0.3-4_i386.deb
./libtiff3g_3.5.5-4_i386.deb
./ppp_2.4.1-3_i386.deb
./courier-pop_0.34.1-2_i386.deb
./debconf-utils_0.9.74_all.deb
./courier-imap_1.3.8.2-2_i386.deb
./tasksel_1.5_i386.deb
./ftp_0.17-7_i386.deb
./mount_2.11g-2_i386.deb
./libnetpbm9_2%3a9.10-4_i386.deb
People on the list probably know I'm a Debian fanatic. And I believe
Debian is a really great application. Now I'm confronted with a problem,
though. Debian stable is out of date by my standards, and I do not like
limiting myself to its contents. So I use packages from Debian's unstable
and some unofficial sources (for courier, in particular).
Eric Pareja's always told me that some day I will feel the pain of
bleeding, and tonight I'm feeling exactly that. I have two crippled Debian
boxes. Gusi, my file server, cannot compile anything using gcc and a few
minutes ago was on the verge of not being able to do anything because of
that ld.so.preload error of mine. Kalapati, my laptop, still suffers from
the incurable problem with perl and the debconf scripts.
Debian's unstable is pretty stable when compared to other distributions.
gcc 2.96 that was shipped with RedHat 7.0, for example, was never even in
Debian's unstable as far as I know (although of course I could be wrong).
Debian and the Debian package maintainers are not perfect, though. They
have their share of booboos and once in awhile a couple of them have bad
hair days. Because this is a volunteer and a peer setup, though, unstable
is not designed to be usable. It's a place where Debian hackers (excluding
myself, who is not a hacker) work towards future releases and play with
various new stuff.
So I'm caught in a bind (not the DNS software). Stable is stable, but it's
too stale for me. Unstable is okay most of the time, but there's no
guarantee it won't f*ck up on you, and with Gusi I can't take chances.
So like the teenager that I really am anyway, I'm in search of a new
distribution to test. I have the ISOs so I shouldn't have difficulty
getting CDs to play with. I also have machines I can use for my
experimentation (Kalapati is a perfect testbed, and I have other Windows
boxes here in the office that have space for dual-booting).
What kind of a distribution am I looking for?
First I'm looking for something that doesn't have a track record as bad as
RedHat. I don't need something with a track record as good as Debian's
stable tree, because that will probably imply the delay in version
upgrades that is exactly why I'm not considering it. Hopefully the
distribution will still be decently stable to begin with, and with a
little "getting to know you" (customization) be more than just fairly
acceptable in terms of security.
Second I'm looking for a distribution that updates packages fast. I'm not
talking about the likes of Debian's unstable, Mandrake's cooker, or
RedHat's rawhide. I'm hoping for (1) prompt security updates, and (2)
fairly decent version upgrades that are at least moderately tested before
release. In this area it looks like Mandrake is in the lead, but I could
be wrong (which is why I'm posting this request-for-comment).
Third I'm looking for a distribution that has some mechanism to aid me in
keeping my system updated. Personally I haven't found anything to beat the
one-two-punch combination of apt and dselect, but as of now they only come
with Debian (aside from the other "Debian derivatives", I presume). I
remember reading a post about something similar to this in Mandrake. Can
someone help refresh my memory about this, please?
I hope this will not become an opportunity for plain pataasan ng ihi or a
flame war as distribution issues normally become. It may even be advisable
for people to reply to me personally (although I think it would be great
if we could all share and discuss out in the open). To those who deploy
Mandrake on servers (like Ian Sison, I presume): maybe you could share
your maintenance experiences with me? In particular I'm sensitive with
distributions that have a flaky upgrade system. I don't like having to
boot from a CD and be unsure of what mess will be done on my system by the
install's upgrade utility.
Also, to those who use RPM-based distributions (this probably accounts for
99% of PLUG): does RPM have some sort of capability to allow the sysad to
decide whether an updated configuration file should be upgraded or not?
dpkg prompts users before updating configuration files and I've found this
very useful. I despise having to search for the rpmsaves or whatever
they're called now.
... in hope for a brighter future ...
--> Jijo "The Kid" Sevilla
--
Federico Sevilla III :: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Network Administrator :: The Leather Collection, Inc.
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