[1835] in NetBSD-Development
Re: Netscape-3.01
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Thu Jan 28 12:50:35 1999
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:48:54 -0500 (EST)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
Cc: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>, gisele@MIT.EDU, linux-dev@MIT.EDU,
netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU, cwis-dev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199901272021.PAA19482@meep.lcs.mit.edu>
Thank you. (jhawk, thank you too.) This is exactly the sort of thing I
needed. For example, I'm perfectly aware of 'libc4', 'libc5' etc, but had
no way of connecting the dots to 'linux1', 'linux2' ....
I'll be happy to add the linux3 symlink today. As you describe, it'll be a
bare symlink to linux2, at least until we need to distinguish linux2 from
linux3 better at some point in the future.
I should be getting locker-maintainers mail and I don't think I am. That
may be a big source of the problem right there. You've spurred my memory
and I am going to go fix that today.
-Todd
On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Erik Nygren wrote:
>
> > Anyway - I have a linux1 directory and a linux2. What's the difference? Is
> > there another flavor of Linux I should know about? I have only one netbsd
> > directory. Is there another flavor of that? These are the sorts of
> > questions I was talking about.
>
> Since the standard sets of system libraries and the binary object
> file format tends to be the key factor for compatability, this is
> what the N of i386_linuxN refers to.
>
> Unlike cluster machines, there tend to be Linux machines running old
> distributions that are around for quite some time. I haven't been
> quite convinced how long we should support older distributions for,
> but we should support them for at least two years after a new
> distribution has been made available. (People shouldn't have to
> reinstall their machines every few months, and we have unfortunately
> tended not to have clean upgrade paths between major distribution
> changes). When a platform is desupported, it should be done
> slowly and during non-critical times. (For example, desupporting
> someone's machine during thesis crunch time or while they're
> working on a final project can really suck).
>
> i386_linux1 uses a.out format binaries and libc4.
> I'm sure there are still a few machines using this,
> but it's probably time to start phasing it out.
>
> i386_linux2 uses ELF format binaries and libc5.
> The vast majority of Linux machines on campus are still
> using this, so we'll probably be stuck supporting
> (or at least not explicitly desupporting)
> this for the next two years or so.
> (Packages that work with this on Netscape's ftp site
> are often described as for "libc5" or "redhat4").
>
> i386_linux3 uses ELF format binaries and libc6 (aka "glibc2").
> This will be used by RedHat Linux-Athena 5.2 which
> we hope to release in a few weeks. A number of machines
> are already running it to try and get problems resolved
> before we release it.
> (Packages that work with this on Netscape's web site
> are often described as for "glibc2" or "libc6" or
> "redhat5" or just glibc).
>
> For the time being, i386_linux3 can be a symlink to i386_linux2 as
> long as libc5 binaries are installed there (since backwards
> compatability exists). Mail has been sent out to
> locker-maintainers@mit.edu a number of times explaining this
> situation.
>
> Creating the i386_linux3 -> i386_linux2 symlink in infoagents
> for the time being would be greatly appreciated.
