Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Michael Schmitz]

Package: libc6
Version: 2.3.5-6
Severity: serious
Architecture: powerpc

Subject says it: while upgrading from a rather dated testing install
(around Apr. 05) with libc6 2.2.5-11.8 to current testing, a number of
things went wrong.

Most notably, upon unpacking libc6 2.3.5-6, the libc6 postinstall failed
with ldconfig segfaulting. This error, in the middle of an upgrade that
required Force-LoopBreak, left me unable to recover normally. I forced the
upgrade to proceed hoping some other package yet to be installed would
restore normal ldconfig function, to no avail.

Unpacking the old 2.2.5-11.8 ldconfig, however, fixed my system perfectly.

Synopsis:

broken ldconfig:  from libc6 2.3.5-6 (perhaps earlier versions are also
affected)

working ldconfig: from libc6 2.2.5-11.8

kernel version: 2.2.20-pmac (Debian package, unknown version)

/proc/cpuinfo:
processor   : 0
cpu : 750
temperature : 0 C
clock   : 233MHz
revision: 2.1
bogomips: 467.44
zero pages  : total 0 (0Kb) current: 0 (0Kb) hits: 0/628 (0%)
machine : Power Macintosh
motherboard : AAPL,Gossamer MacRISC
L2 cache: 512K unified pipelined-syncro-burst
memory  : 160MB
pmac-generation : OldWorld

Please advise how to further debug this (gdb won't help, and the
disassembly of both binaries differ too much to give any meaningful info).

Michael



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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Aurelien Jarno]

Michael Schmitz a écrit :

Package: libc6
Version: 2.3.5-6
Severity: serious
Architecture: powerpc

Subject says it: while upgrading from a rather dated testing install
(around Apr. 05) with libc6 2.2.5-11.8 to current testing, a number of
things went wrong.


I am running unstable on an Oldworld PowerMac, kernel 2.6.8, and I don't 
have any problem.


Your system looks older than a testing from April 2005. libc6 version 
2.2.5-11.8 is a libc6 from Woody, an Debian does not support direct 
Woody -> Etch upgrade.



Most notably, upon unpacking libc6 2.3.5-6, the libc6 postinstall failed
with ldconfig segfaulting. This error, in the middle of an upgrade that
required Force-LoopBreak, left me unable to recover normally. I forced the
upgrade to proceed hoping some other package yet to be installed would
restore normal ldconfig function, to no avail.

Unpacking the old 2.2.5-11.8 ldconfig, however, fixed my system perfectly.

Synopsis:

broken ldconfig:  from libc6 2.3.5-6 (perhaps earlier versions are also
affected)

working ldconfig: from libc6 2.2.5-11.8

kernel version: 2.2.20-pmac (Debian package, unknown version)


This is a rather old version, not even available in Debian Sarge.

I suggest you to upgrade to Debian Sarge first (and also your kernel to 
a 2.4 or 2.6 version), before trying to upgrade to testing or unstable.


Bye,
Aurelien

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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Steve Langasek]

severity 326220 important
thanks

On Fri, Sep 02, 2005 at 06:22:34PM +0200, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
> Your system looks older than a testing from April 2005. libc6 version
> 2.2.5-11.8 is a libc6 from Woody, an Debian does not support direct
> Woody -> Etch upgrade.


>> kernel version: 2.2.20-pmac (Debian package, unknown version)

> This is a rather old version, not even available in Debian Sarge.

> I suggest you to upgrade to Debian Sarge first (and also your kernel to 
> a 2.4 or 2.6 version), before trying to upgrade to testing or unstable.

Yes, for both of these reasons, this is not a serious-severity bug.

Thanks,
-- 
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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Michael Schmitz]

reassign 326220 apt

> Your system looks older than a testing from April 2005. libc6 version
> 2.2.5-11.8 is a libc6 from Woody, an Debian does not support direct
> Woody -> Etch upgrade.

So please reassign the bug to whatever seems appropriate. Not being able
to upgrade from woody to current testing/unstable is what I'd consider a
bug in its own right.

Besides, what's the proposed fix? etch ldconfig just doesn't work, so what
piece am I missing?

IIRC woody was still stable at that time, so it isn't all that outdated.

> > kernel version: 2.2.20-pmac (Debian package, unknown version)
>
> This is a rather old version, not even available in Debian Sarge.
>
> I suggest you to upgrade to Debian Sarge first (and also your kernel to
> a 2.4 or 2.6 version), before trying to upgrade to testing or unstable.

Well, apt or dpkg should have figured that out, and warned me off to not
attempt the upgrade, right? Yet another bug.

The system is booted using a floppy, I'm not sure I can even fit a 2.4 or
2.6 kernel on there. Either way, 'you should not try that' is not an
option if there's no warning during the upgrade. Once ldconfig has been
installed, the upgrade is shot. Nice way to tell your average user 'just
wipe the system and install ubuntu'. Debian used to pride itself on being
able to upgrade from oldstable to unstable without a hitch, and I've done
that before, even remotely.

Reassigning to apt, CC to debian-powerpc as a warning to others. Repeat
after me: 'it's not libc's fault if ldconfig breaks'.

Michael



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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 10:30:22AM +0200, Michael Schmitz wrote:
> reassign 326220 apt
> 
> > Your system looks older than a testing from April 2005. libc6 version
> > 2.2.5-11.8 is a libc6 from Woody, an Debian does not support direct
> > Woody -> Etch upgrade.
> 
> So please reassign the bug to whatever seems appropriate. Not being able
> to upgrade from woody to current testing/unstable is what I'd consider a
> bug in its own right.
> 
> Besides, what's the proposed fix? etch ldconfig just doesn't work, so what
> piece am I missing?
> 
> IIRC woody was still stable at that time, so it isn't all that outdated.
> 
> > > kernel version: 2.2.20-pmac (Debian package, unknown version)
> >
> > This is a rather old version, not even available in Debian Sarge.
> >
> > I suggest you to upgrade to Debian Sarge first (and also your kernel to
> > a 2.4 or 2.6 version), before trying to upgrade to testing or unstable.
> 
> Well, apt or dpkg should have figured that out, and warned me off to not
> attempt the upgrade, right? Yet another bug.
> 
> The system is booted using a floppy, I'm not sure I can even fit a 2.4 or
> 2.6 kernel on there. Either way, 'you should not try that' is not an

The 2.6.8 sarge kernel did fit on a miboot floppy just fine, thank you, miboot
is not in main though because of the apple-owned boot sector we have no
licence for, but you can find it on :

  http://people.debian.org/~luther/miboot

The current 2.6.12 sid kernel is too big by around 200K, but we will work it
to fit on a miboot size again before the etch release, hopefully, and by then
we may even have quik-floppy support or whatever, so ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther



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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Michael Schmitz]

> > Well, apt or dpkg should have figured that out, and warned me off to not
> > attempt the upgrade, right? Yet another bug.
> >
> > The system is booted using a floppy, I'm not sure I can even fit a 2.4 or
> > 2.6 kernel on there. Either way, 'you should not try that' is not an
>
> The 2.6.8 sarge kernel did fit on a miboot floppy just fine, thank you, miboot

Thanks for pointing this out. Now what in libc6 2.3.5 doesn't work anymore
with 2.2 kernels, and why doesn't libc6 test for the running kernel
version before attempting an upgrade?

Should this bug be assigned to apt, or libc6, or what?

I'll try your 2.6.8 sometime; is the stuff required to build miboot
floppies in the powerpc kernel source, and would building a minimal 2.6.13
kernel fit on floppy?

Michael




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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 11:50:09AM +0200, Michael Schmitz wrote:
> > > Well, apt or dpkg should have figured that out, and warned me off to not
> > > attempt the upgrade, right? Yet another bug.
> > >
> > > The system is booted using a floppy, I'm not sure I can even fit a 2.4 or
> > > 2.6 kernel on there. Either way, 'you should not try that' is not an
> >
> > The 2.6.8 sarge kernel did fit on a miboot floppy just fine, thank you, 
> > miboot
> 
> Thanks for pointing this out. Now what in libc6 2.3.5 doesn't work anymore
> with 2.2 kernels, and why doesn't libc6 test for the running kernel
> version before attempting an upgrade?
> 
> Should this bug be assigned to apt, or libc6, or what?
> 
> I'll try your 2.6.8 sometime; is the stuff required to build miboot

Well, we only really tried miboot in debian-installer setup, and i never
really had success with it with 2.6 floppies, except two mysterious times in
oldenbourg one year ago. We use 2.4 miboot floppies there. There has been some
discussion about using hfs formatted floppies with the kernel on it without
miboot though.

> floppies in the powerpc kernel source, and would building a minimal 2.6.13
> kernel fit on floppy?

Yes, with 2.6.8 though the box died when switching the framebuffer on or
something.

you need the miboot package from p.d.o/~luther/miboot, and can look at the
instructions on how to use it in the d-i build stuff.

Friendly,

Sven LUther



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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Aurelien Jarno]

Michael Schmitz a écrit :

reassign 326220 apt



Your system looks older than a testing from April 2005. libc6 version
2.2.5-11.8 is a libc6 from Woody, an Debian does not support direct
Woody -> Etch upgrade.



So please reassign the bug to whatever seems appropriate. Not being able
to upgrade from woody to current testing/unstable is what I'd consider a
bug in its own right.


It's seems you are not aware that Sarge is out and is now the stable 
version. Debian does not support the upgrade from stable (Woody) to 
stable + 2 (the future Etch). You have to upgrade to stable + 1 (Sarge) 
to first.


So please upgrade to Sarge first.



Besides, what's the proposed fix? etch ldconfig just doesn't work, so what
piece am I missing?


Update to Sarge first, and also to a Sarge kernel.


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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Michael Schmitz]

> > So please reassign the bug to whatever seems appropriate. Not being able
> > to upgrade from woody to current testing/unstable is what I'd consider a
> > bug in its own right.
>
> It's seems you are not aware that Sarge is out and is now the stable

I'm well aware of that, thank you very much.

> version. Debian does not support the upgrade from stable (Woody) to
> stable + 2 (the future Etch). You have to upgrade to stable + 1 (Sarge)
> to first.

That's what I've been missing. Please note that this used to be different
in earlier releases, so I had a reasonable expectation this would work.
And there was no warning during the attempted upgrade to make me
reconsider.

> So please upgrade to Sarge first.

What, now that I've already shoehorned testing onto the box? You gotta be
kidding. What would this solve?

> > Besides, what's the proposed fix? etch ldconfig just doesn't work, so what
> > piece am I missing?
>
> Update to Sarge first, and also to a Sarge kernel.

Please add a check to libc6 preinst that makes sure the running kernel (as
determined by uname -r, just like is already done for i386, sparc sun4m,
hppa, parisc64, mips and amd64) is recent enough for powerpc ldconfig from
libc6 2.3.5 to work. You have this check for other architectures to
prevent bad things from happening, so apparently permitting ldconfig
breakage on powerpc is a bug, and a serious one at that.

To point out the not-so-obvious: I recovered my system just fine. I ask
for such a check to be added for the next person to upgrade from woody.

I'm willing to help testing just what kernel feature is missing in my
kernel, or what exact kernel version would be OK to use. I indicated as
much in my initial bug report. If you already know the appropriate kernel
versions, why not have that check? If you don't know them, why do you give
me that 'dont do that, stupid' crap instead of taking me up on my offer to
help debug this?

To put this into perspective: I need this old G3 as a fallback developer
machine to debug a problem with nvsetenv on OldWorld, as long as my
PowerBook is being repaired. While updating that G3, I trip over a severe
libc6 bug, and report it. Color me clueless for assuming these reports are
actually welcomed.

I'm getting seriously fed up with this overgrown project. Any other
distributions out there with decent powerpc support?

Michael



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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Rogério Brito]

I know that this may be off-topic for the bug, but just for archiving
purposes, I'm also sending it to the BTS.

On Sep 03 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> There has been some discussion about using hfs formatted floppies with
> the kernel on it without miboot though.

Are you talking about the discussion we had on debian-powerpc a few days
ago? If yes, then you perhaps misunderstood what I said.

I said that I the method I use is to take the HFS floppy from woody and
replace its kernel with a new generated, bleeding-edge kernel (taken
directly from Andrew Morton experimental tree).

I just checked and, yes, the fake Finder and System folders *are*
miboot.

For more details, please see the comments I made to myself on
.


Hope this clears any confusion, Rogério Brito.

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Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Sep 04, 2005 at 06:54:57AM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> I know that this may be off-topic for the bug, but just for archiving
> purposes, I'm also sending it to the BTS.
> 
> On Sep 03 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > There has been some discussion about using hfs formatted floppies with
> > the kernel on it without miboot though.
> 
> Are you talking about the discussion we had on debian-powerpc a few days
> ago? If yes, then you perhaps misunderstood what I said.
> 
> I said that I the method I use is to take the HFS floppy from woody and
> replace its kernel with a new generated, bleeding-edge kernel (taken
> directly from Andrew Morton experimental tree).
> 
> I just checked and, yes, the fake Finder and System folders *are*
> miboot.
> 
> For more details, please see the comments I made to myself on
> .

Ok, are you saying that you managed to build miboot floppies using the old
woody miboot floppies, (i think woody came with do-it-yourself-miboot stuff,
not sure). This would then be a 2.6 kernel. Could you post me the config file
for this kernel ?

Could you also try the same kernel with the miboot from
http://people.debain.org/~luther/miboot

Then do :

gzip -9 vmlinux

dd if=/dev/zero of=miboot_floppy bs=1024 count=1440
hformat -l "miboot floppy" miboot_floppy

echo device miboot_floppy > miboot.conf
echo kernel vmlinux.gz root=0200 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 
devfs=mount debconf/priority=medium >> miboot.conf
miboot -c miboot.conf

If this works, it would be nice to do the following :

objcopy -O aixcoff-rs6000 -R .stab -R .stabstr -R .comment 
-add-section=image=vmlinux.gz dummy.o vmlinux.gz

just after the gzip step, where dummy.o is taken out of
arch/ppc/boot/openfirmware, you need to do a make zImage to compile it.

mkvmlinuz -a used by d-i currently does this second step, which may be cause
fo this problem.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Rogério Brito]

On Sep 04 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> Ok, are you saying that you managed to build miboot floppies using the
> old woody miboot floppies,

Yes, I did.

> (i think woody came with do-it-yourself-miboot stuff, not sure).

I don't know anything about building miboot from scratch.

> This would then be a 2.6 kernel.

Indeed, I'm running:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ uname -a
Linux chagas 2.6.13-rc6-mm1-4.ow #1 Sun Aug 21 07:45:32 BRT 2005 ppc GNU/Linux
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

> Could you post me the config file for this kernel ?

Of course. It's attached to this mail.

> Could you also try the same kernel with the miboot from
> http://people.debain.org/~luther/miboot

I will try this later. Please, don't let me forget this.


Hope this helps, Rogério.

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config-2.6.13-rc6-mm1-4.ow.bz2
Description: Binary data

Bug#326220: libc6 2.3.5 ldconfig segfaults on powerpc oldworld

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 03:36:27AM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> On Sep 04 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Ok, are you saying that you managed to build miboot floppies using the
> > old woody miboot floppies,
> 
> Yes, I did.
> 
> > (i think woody came with do-it-yourself-miboot stuff, not sure).
> 
> I don't know anything about building miboot from scratch.
> 
> > This would then be a 2.6 kernel.
> 
> Indeed, I'm running:
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ uname -a
> Linux chagas 2.6.13-rc6-mm1-4.ow #1 Sun Aug 21 07:45:32 BRT 2005 ppc GNU/Linux
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ 
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> 
> > Could you post me the config file for this kernel ?
> 
> Of course. It's attached to this mail.
> 
> > Could you also try the same kernel with the miboot from
> > http://people.debain.org/~luther/miboot
> 
> I will try this later. Please, don't let me forget this.

Ok, i will ping you next WE. if i don't hear from you before and don't forget
myself :)

Friendly,

Sven Luther