[tex-live] linux 2.4 binaries

David Kastrup dak at gnu.org
Fri Jul 6 10:50:58 CEST 2007


Taco Hoekwater <taco at elvenkind.com> writes:

> Norbert Preining wrote:
>> On Fre, 06 Jul 2007, Joachim Schrod wrote:
>>>> Unless such a machine materializes, we will be forced to move on to
>>>> Linux 2.6 in 2008 :).
>>> I have several 2.4 systems, we can surely arrange something.
>>
>> Me too, no need to think about it now. I can even compile a dump kernel
>> for my machine and compile it there.
>
> That won't work. The "linux 2.4" phrase is jus a shortcut for "an
> installation of a five year old linux distribution".
>
>> If it is only the libs I can trivially install an etch or sarge chroot
>> and build it there. That should be definitely enough.
>
> There are some less obvious issues. The most important problem is not
> the common libraries like libc and libm (even though the new system
> of having incompatible version flagged by minor number is a pain),
> but the more system-specific stuff like linux-gate.so and libgcc_s.so.
> Perhaps you can get rid of those items with some gcc commandline
> option, I don't know. Otherwise, you have to install older versions of
> gcc and binutils as well, and at that point, a complete old distro is
> much easier to handle.

What I usually do in such cases is to install a bare-bones distro on
some LVM partition without a working boot setup, then chroot into it.
That way, I can keep my usual work environment without the need to
reboot or stuff.  Of course, once the environment diverges so much
that executables built in the old system won't run anymore on the
current system, things may get icky.

-- 
David Kastrup


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