[1512] in SIPB_Linux_Development
implications of previous post regarding rx.c bug
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Stark)
Sun Oct 27 02:51:25 1996
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 96 02:50 EST
From: Greg Stark <gsstark@MIT.EDU>
To: linux-dev@MIT.EDU
The bug i tracked down in rx.c is of interest to Linux users on Athena
especially because it seems to bite zwgc far more frequently than other
programs. However, the fix is likely to only go into the beta versions of
libc, now at 5.4.10 i believe. Since neither I nor the majority of Athena
Linux users track the cutting edge libc versions a workaround would be useful.
One idea i have is to build a shared library consiting of that one object file
and a use LD_PRELOAD to force ld.so to use the fixed version. Debian, and i
presume Redhat as well, provide a facility that would allow editting global
cshrc and profile files to set LD_PRELOAD and guarantee that the kludge would
be cleanly removed when libc was update past a specified version. Personally i
disapprove of using environment variables for site-wide configurations like
this, but as a workaround it seems reasonable.
I can start setting up the Debian package and it shouldn't be hard for someone
with Redhat tools and documentation to adapt whatever i write to Redhat
systems. The final package can't be set up until i know what version of libc
the fix goes in if it's to be sure to deinstall the hacks when a fixed libc is
installed.
Alternately if people think the problem is never seen outside of Zwgc we can
just do what i did while debugging, link a fixed rx.o statically into Zwgc.
greg
