On Mon, May 05, 2014 at 06:44:30AM +0900, Joel Rees wrote: > Well, okay, we need to start somewhere, and, while we suspect ld, we don't > really know for sure. And we suspect that the actual fix may not end up > being in ld. > > So, what is the name of the package that is trying to load libc6:i386? That > probably isn't where the bug is, but it seems to be the cause of the bug.
Well, in this case, Firefox was looking to link in some 32-bit libraries, but those libraries weren't installed, not even a 32-bit linker. The problem was required libraries not being installed, the symptom was a generic "file not found" error which led to all the confusion at the start of the thread. The reason the libraries weren't installed was that Firefox was installed from some external source without the user ensuring the relevant libraries were available to the application. Debian can't be held accountable for that. If the 32-bit Firefox had been able to talk to the 64-bit linker (I'm not sure that's even possible), then it would be up to the linker to return a more meaningful error than "file not found", at least tell us which library or which function was being requested, and so a bug could be reported against libc6 either generically or :amd64 (to be passed upstream). Otherwise there is no bug to be reported against Debian. I'm at best vague on what happens if an application can't find a linker to pull in requested libraries. Should the bug be reported against Firefox? It's an old version, are more recent versions more precise in their error messages in this kind of situation? Cheers, Tom -- Should I start with the time I SWITCHED personalities with a BEATNIK hair stylist or my failure to refer five TEENAGERS to a good OCULIST?
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