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Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?)

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duncanphilipnorman at gmail

Oct 30, 2009, 7:01 AM

Post #1 of 11 (297 views)
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Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?)

The company I work for is using gentoo on all its machines. We just
got a license to a commercial tool which does not support gentoo. The
closest thing it supports is RHEL v4.

Running any command provided by the tool results in an explosive
memory leak (virtual memory hits 400G in 1 second, and continues to
climb).

I suspect the problem is that RHEL v4 uses =sys-libs/glibc-2.3.4,
whereas we have =sys-libs/glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2 installed.

I have three questions:
1. Am I posting to the right list?
2. Any idea what's going on? Could it be something other than glibc
causing the problem?
3. If it is glibc, is there some way to install glibc slotted? Could
I install an old version of glibc to some other lib folder (like
/opt/lib64), and then use LD_LIBRARY_PATH somehow to get the tool to
look there first? How?

Thanks for any help or ideas.

Duncan

P.S. In case it's useful, here is the output of ldd:
linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff9e3ff000)
libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x00007f49c871b000)
libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x00007f49c8503000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007f49c827e000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f49c807a000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f49c7d07000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f49c897a000)

marduk at letterboxes

Oct 30, 2009, 8:24 AM

Post #2 of 11 (284 views)
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Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 10:01 -0400, Duncan Smith wrote:
> The company I work for is using gentoo on all its machines. We just
> got a license to a commercial tool which does not support gentoo. The
> closest thing it supports is RHEL v4.
>
> Running any command provided by the tool results in an explosive
> memory leak (virtual memory hits 400G in 1 second, and continues to
> climb).
>
> I suspect the problem is that RHEL v4 uses =sys-libs/glibc-2.3.4,
> whereas we have =sys-libs/glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2 installed.
>
> I have three questions:
> 1. Am I posting to the right list?

You are just just as likely to get support from Gentoo about software we
have no access to as your distributer is to support Gentoo.

> 2. Any idea what's going on? Could it be something other than glibc
> causing the problem?

It could be one of a hundred million things. Without access to the
program it's really hard to tell.

> 3. If it is glibc, is there some way to install glibc slotted? Could
> I install an old version of glibc to some other lib folder (like
> /opt/lib64), and then use LD_LIBRARY_PATH somehow to get the tool to
> look there first? How?

You can't have multiple versions of glibc. And you can't downgrade
glibc. Attempting to do so may result in having more than just that
program misbehaving ;)

My suggestion, for your sanity and support: if you insist on Gentoo then
at least run RHEL4 (or CentOS or whatever) inside a virtual machine and
run your app from there.

volkerarmin at googlemail

Oct 30, 2009, 8:26 AM

Post #3 of 11 (295 views)
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Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

On Freitag 30 Oktober 2009, Albert Hopkins wrote:

> > 3. If it is glibc, is there some way to install glibc slotted? Could
> > I install an old version of glibc to some other lib folder (like
> > /opt/lib64), and then use LD_LIBRARY_PATH somehow to get the tool to
> > look there first? How?
>
> You can't have multiple versions of glibc. And you can't downgrade
> glibc. Attempting to do so may result in having more than just that
> program misbehaving ;)

you can have multiple glibc's. Just not via portage.
But yes, it is a mess. A mess that is most likely to explode violently.

>
> My suggestion, for your sanity and support: if you insist on Gentoo then
> at least run RHEL4 (or CentOS or whatever) inside a virtual machine and
> run your app from there.
>

yeah, I would go down that route too.

duncanphilipnorman at gmail

Oct 30, 2009, 12:22 PM

Post #4 of 11 (284 views)
Permalink

Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

Thank you both for your quick response.

I'll probably end up taking the virtual machine approach. I may also
try some sort of chroot solution... I'll see how much of a hassle
vmware is.

2009/10/30 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin [at] googlemail>:
> On Freitag 30 Oktober 2009, Albert Hopkins wrote:
>
>> > �3. If it is glibc, is there some way to install glibc slotted? �Could
>> > I install an old version of glibc to some other lib folder (like
>> > /opt/lib64), and then use LD_LIBRARY_PATH somehow to get the tool to
>> > look there first? �How?
>>
>> You can't have multiple versions of glibc. �And you can't downgrade
>> glibc. �Attempting to do so may result in having more than just that
>> program misbehaving ;)
>
> you can have multiple glibc's. Just not via portage.
> But yes, it is a mess. A mess that is most likely to explode violently.
>
>>
>> My suggestion, for your sanity and support: if you insist on Gentoo then
>> at least run RHEL4 (or CentOS or whatever) inside a virtual machine and
>> run your app from there.
>>
>
> yeah, I would go down that route too.
>
>

volkerarmin at googlemail

Oct 30, 2009, 12:37 PM

Post #5 of 11 (278 views)
Permalink

Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

On Freitag 30 Oktober 2009, Duncan Smith wrote:
> Thank you both for your quick response.
>
> I'll probably end up taking the virtual machine approach. I may also
> try some sort of chroot solution... I'll see how much of a hassle
> vmware is.

chroot can work nicely, but you have to create a gentoo with a very old glibc.
The problems might not be worth it.

Virtualbox on the other hand is pretty much hassle free in my experience.
Can't talk about vmware - haven't used that in years ;)

kyle.bader at gmail

Oct 30, 2009, 2:52 PM

Post #6 of 11 (275 views)
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Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

Avoiding 1, 2, and 3 but thought I'd propose a 4 other than a virtual
machine. Ask the vendor if they can provide a statically compiled
version, that way you don't have to worry about libc. I dunno how
flexible the vendor is but its worth asking :)

On 10/30/09, Duncan Smith <duncanphilipnorman [at] gmail> wrote:
> The company I work for is using gentoo on all its machines. We just
> got a license to a commercial tool which does not support gentoo. The
> closest thing it supports is RHEL v4.
>
> Running any command provided by the tool results in an explosive
> memory leak (virtual memory hits 400G in 1 second, and continues to
> climb).
>
> I suspect the problem is that RHEL v4 uses =sys-libs/glibc-2.3.4,
> whereas we have =sys-libs/glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2 installed.
>
> I have three questions:
> 1. Am I posting to the right list?
> 2. Any idea what's going on? Could it be something other than glibc
> causing the problem?
> 3. If it is glibc, is there some way to install glibc slotted? Could
> I install an old version of glibc to some other lib folder (like
> /opt/lib64), and then use LD_LIBRARY_PATH somehow to get the tool to
> look there first? How?
>
> Thanks for any help or ideas.
>
> Duncan
>
> P.S. In case it's useful, here is the output of ldd:
> linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff9e3ff000)
> libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x00007f49c871b000)
> libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x00007f49c8503000)
> libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007f49c827e000)
> libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f49c807a000)
> libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f49c7d07000)
> /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f49c897a000)
>
>

--
Sent from my mobile device

Kyle

alan.mckinnon at gmail

Oct 30, 2009, 2:58 PM

Post #7 of 11 (281 views)
Permalink

Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

On Friday 30 October 2009 23:52:10 Kyle Bader wrote:
> Avoiding 1, 2, and 3 but thought I'd propose a 4 other than a virtual
> machine. Ask the vendor if they can provide a statically compiled
> version, that way you don't have to worry about libc. I dunno how
> flexible the vendor is but its worth asking :)

If it's a somewhat critical machine for business, just drop a new stand-alone
box running RHEL4. Critical machines usually generate|save more cash than the
cost of the box they run on

> On 10/30/09, Duncan Smith <duncanphilipnorman [at] gmail> wrote:
> > The company I work for is using gentoo on all its machines. We just
> > got a license to a commercial tool which does not support gentoo. The
> > closest thing it supports is RHEL v4.
> >
> > Running any command provided by the tool results in an explosive
> > memory leak (virtual memory hits 400G in 1 second, and continues to
> > climb).
> >
> > I suspect the problem is that RHEL v4 uses =sys-libs/glibc-2.3.4,
> > whereas we have =sys-libs/glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2 installed.
> >
> > I have three questions:
> > 1. Am I posting to the right list?
> > 2. Any idea what's going on? Could it be something other than glibc
> > causing the problem?
> > 3. If it is glibc, is there some way to install glibc slotted? Could
> > I install an old version of glibc to some other lib folder (like
> > /opt/lib64), and then use LD_LIBRARY_PATH somehow to get the tool to
> > look there first? How?
> >
> > Thanks for any help or ideas.
> >
> > Duncan
> >
> > P.S. In case it's useful, here is the output of ldd:
> > linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff9e3ff000)
> > libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x00007f49c871b000)
> > libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x00007f49c8503000)
> > libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007f49c827e000)
> > libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f49c807a000)
> > libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f49c7d07000)
> > /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f49c897a000)
>

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

marduk at letterboxes

Oct 30, 2009, 4:27 PM

Post #8 of 11 (287 views)
Permalink

Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 14:52 -0700, Kyle Bader wrote:
> I dunno how
> flexible the vendor is but its worth asking :)

They only support RHEL4. RHEL4 was released nearly 5 years ago and uses
the 2.6.9 kernel. I think that shows how flexible they are. :)

billk at iinet

Oct 31, 2009, 2:20 AM

Post #9 of 11 (277 views)
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Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

I was in a similar position some years ago - grab a copy of the needed
libs from somewhere and use "ldpreload" to load them into memory before
running the application. Google will help.

In some cases, you can symlink the needed lib names to existing later
libs and run ldconfig before trying to run the app. This does work
sometimes, but success varies ...

BillK

On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 19:27 -0400, Albert Hopkins wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 14:52 -0700, Kyle Bader wrote:
> > I dunno how
> > flexible the vendor is but its worth asking :)
>
> They only support RHEL4. RHEL4 was released nearly 5 years ago and uses
> the 2.6.9 kernel. I think that shows how flexible they are. :)
>
>
>
--
William Kenworthy <billk [at] iinet>
Home in Perth!

duncanphilipnorman at gmail

Nov 2, 2009, 10:45 AM

Post #10 of 11 (267 views)
Permalink

Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

2009/10/30 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin [at] googlemail>:
> Virtualbox on the other hand is pretty much hassle free in my experience.
> Can't talk about vmware - haven't used that in years ;)

Thanks for the pointer to Virtualbox... I hadn't heard of it. Looks
like the wiki has some help, though.
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/VirtualBox

I'll give it a shot before vmware.

duncanphilipnorman at gmail

Nov 2, 2009, 10:52 AM

Post #11 of 11 (268 views)
Permalink

Re: Installing an old glibc to run a proprietary commercial tool (would that even help?) [In reply to]

2009/10/31 William Kenworthy <billk [at] iinet>:
> I was in a similar position some years ago - grab a copy of the needed
> libs from somewhere and use "ldpreload" to load them into memory before
> running the application. �Google will help.
>
> In some cases, you can symlink the needed lib names to existing later
> libs �and run ldconfig before trying to run the app. �This does work
> sometimes, but success varies ...
>
> BillK

Interesting... I may give that a shot. Should be able to crank out a
wrapper script to do that automatically.

It'd be prudent to have RHEL4 anyway, since that's what some of our
customers are running, but it's good to have another option.

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