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[flux <flux AT sourcemage.org>]

Eric Sandall (eric AT sandall.us) wrote [08.12.01 00:02]:
> On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:58:56 +0100
> Ladislav Hagara <ladislav.hagara AT unob.cz> wrote:
> > When I updated to default glibc 2.9 I had a problem with mc, the keys
> > F3 and F4 didn't work.
> > The problem disappeared when I recast glibc 2.9 with "sanitized linux 
> > kernel headers from the latest stable release", it is default off.
> > Imho, we should change default to on, or even automatically use
> > headers from latest stable kernel.
> > Using headers 2.6.25 with linux 2.6.27 is not good.
> 
> We had issues in the past with glibc not using the same headers (even
> if outdated) every time. However, if we continue to use old headers we
> will not got new features from the new kernels (since the headers won't
> support it). What happens is glibc gets updated with new headers, but
> other apps are not updated to use these new headers. Or worse, some
> apps are built with headers X, others with headers Y, and yet more with
> the latest and greatest headers Z. Does this even matter, or does it
> only matter that glibc is built against the headers and everyone else
> is happy to link against glibc?
> 
> How much testing has been done with using 'dynamic' sanitized kernel
> headers, which glibc uses our linux spell to determine which headers to
> download?
> 
> -sandalle

There are a few points I would like to add to this discussion. The first
is that while there can be problems due to having a kernel newer than
the headers that glibc is built against, there can also be problems with
the combination of glibc and an older kernel. I ran into a problem where
I literally could not build linux 2.6.22 with glibc+2.6.25 headers
installed. Therefore, it's not a matter of the glibc headers being too
old, but simply not matching the installed kernel.

Additionally, there are many users who don't use the linux spell to
manage their kernel (I'm one of them). I think the glibc spell should be
modified so that if the kernel spell is not installed then the user is
prompted for a version of headers to use. Since the headers could come
from /usr/src/linux{-*} anyway, we should have that as an option for
which version of headers to use, in addition to downloading fresh
headers.

I'd like to see some honest diffs showing the differences between
glibc-installed kernel headers and actual linux kernel headers. If
someone has a url they can point me to, that's even easier. But
otherwise I've only heard that the linux headers had problems in the
past, and have not seen any evidence myself. I'm curious what the
differences really are, and I think knowing the differences can help us
to understand the versioning problems as well.

-- 
Justin "flux_control" Boffemmyer
Cauldron wizard and general mage
Source Mage GNU/Linux
http://www.sourcemage.org

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