[kwlug-disc] Libc, version and architecture compatibility

[Adam Glauser]

Back in May, I asked the group* about a problem I had installing some
software which relies on an old version of libc. It turns out that the
vendor now supports using OpenMQ in place of this older message queue
software, so I didn't have to get this working in the end. This is a good
thing, because I think it was a lost cause. Nevertheless, I wanted to share
my experiences in case it is helpful to someone.

For cases where less ancient versions of libraries are needed, some distros
have <lib>-compat packages for just such occasions.

I found a handy resource at rpm.pbone.net. I tried a few other RPM search
tools, but had the most luck with this one. I was able to find the version
of libc that I needed from a few different distros' packages.

One difficulty I ran in to was chasing down dependencies for the library.
Using rpm.pbone.net, I was able to at least find a distro (TurboLinux) that
had packages containing the various libraries I needed. Getting all of the
libraries from the same distro made me feel a bit more confident that at
least they would be mutually compatible. I extracted the library binaries
from the rpm packages using the `rpm2cpio` and `cpio` tools.

My approach was to create a separate directory for the libraries, then
modify the library search path environment variable before launching the
install tool. In this way I could override system libraries in a way that
would not affect other software on the system.

Eventually, I managed to a full dependency chain assembled. The
insurmountable problem came when something inside the installer binary
relied on a different version of one of the many libraries. I imagine there
would have been away to work around this, but the whole process seemed a
bit too rickety by this point, and the vendor had finally clarified that
OpenMQ was the supported upgrade path.

Thanks to Paul and B.S. for their advice. You may have missed Paul's
message, as it ended up in the archive but didn't make it to my inbox. It's
worth reading if you think this is an interesting topic, so I've linked+ it
below.

* http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/2016-May/029303.html
+ http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/2016-May/029308.html
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