glibc and RHEL? How do I upgrade the one without messing up the other?

[W. Dale Hall]

Hi there, sports fans

I'll apologize in advance for the broad cross-posting, but I'm
finding lots of these newsgroups are becoming flooded with some
kinda sporge crap. Besides having little clue as to which newsgroup
is the proper home for my query, I figure the scattered distribution
might make it more likely that I'll reach someone who has the
patience to wade through this & throw an answer back my way.

My problem:

I'm running RHEL 4 (kernel is apparently this: 2.6.9-67.ELsmp),
and have found out that my version of glibc is something like
2.3.4. Actually, I don't really know the precise version, but
I was attempting to install my latest Matlab upgrade only to
have it bark at me that the machine configuration was too old.

Here's the barking action:

[***@dale-biglinux /]# media/cdrecorder1/install

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warning: glibc 2.3.4 - Unsupported version
glibc 2.3.6 - MATLAB built using this version
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-> Your configuration APPEARS to be too OLD to run this MATLAB program!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
For system requirements consult http://www.mathworks.com ...


Of course, the above link pointed to system requirements that just
reiterated that I need some version at least as recent as 2.3.6. Upon
searching for all of my glibc - related files, I found this.

Here's me looking for what glibc I got:

[***@dale-biglinux /]# find . -name "glibc*"
./usr/share/doc/glibc-common-2.3.4
./usr/share/doc/glibc-2.3.4
./usr/lib64/glib-2.0/include/glibconfig.h
./usr/sbin/glibc_post_upgrade.i686
./usr/sbin/glibc_post_upgrade.x86_64
./usr/lib/valgrind/glibc-2.3.supp
./usr/lib/valgrind/glibc-2.4.supp
./usr/lib/valgrind/glibc-2.2.supp

At this point, I've shown what a clueless user I am, and folks will
jump in and say

"geez! you find the version of glibc by invoking
the frobbitz command with dingledangle options
except after c"

which knowledge would be greatly appreciated, but what I really want
is how to find the latest version of glibc that the above kernel will
support, and how to grab some rpm or other magical file that will do
the updating without me having to learn a whole lot of stuff that I'll
forget by the next time I have to go through this.

On the other hand, if the answer is

"pony up the 3 bills to upgrade your RHEL license to
RHEL 5 and all your problems will be solved until that
license expires and the Mathworks launches the subsequent
'old glibc is obsolete' version of Matlab",

then at least I'll have the ammo to go to my boss and say:
lookyhere. I gotta get this new RedHat thang.

Well, that's my tale of woe, such as it is. Needless to say (but I'll
say it anyway), I'd really appreciate a way to get the upgraded glibc
so I can get Matlab upgraded so I can get back to work.

Thanks a heap.

Dale

[John Oliver]

["Followup-To:" header set to linux.redhat.]

Post by W. Dale Hall
I'm running RHEL 4 (kernel is apparently this: 2.6.9-67.ELsmp),
and have found out that my version of glibc is something like
2.3.4. Actually, I don't really know the precise version, but
I was attempting to install my latest Matlab upgrade only to
have it bark at me that the machine configuration was too old.

You may have the most recent glibc supported by Red Hat for that
version. have you tried "up2date glibc"?

If you *must* have a newer version of glibc, and do not care about the
Red Hatishness of your system (ie. no support), you could hit up
http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/ or http://rpmfind.net/ for more
recent versions.

[Trevor Hemsley]

On Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:20:47 UTC in comp.os.linux.questions, "W. Dale Hall"

Post by W. Dale Hall
what I really want
is how to find the latest version of glibc that the above kernel will
support,

The Redhat version would be whatever got installed when you ran `up2date --nox
-u`

On my fully patched and up to date RHEL4 system I get this

[***@rhel4 ~]$ rpm -q glibc
glibc-2.3.4-2.39

From the fact that you say your kernel is 2.6.9.-67.ELsmp I can tell you that
you do have some missing patches but I doubt if glibc will be among them but
worth a look anyway.

Unless you have a corporate requirement to run RHEL you might also look to see
if Centos 5.1 (RHEL5.1 in disguise) would be a decent upgrade. Centos is free.

[***@centos5 ~]$ rpm -q glibc
glibc-2.5-18.el5_1.1

[Greg Harrison]

Hi Dale:

I encountered the same problem when installing MATLAB R2008a. I
contacted MathWorks support and learned the following:

-----
MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a) was built using glibc 2.3.6, and this causes the
warning to be displayed on machines that run glibc 2.3.4 (RHEL 4.x is
an example case where this can happen)

However, MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a) is expected to work with glibc 2.3.4 the
same way it works with glibc 2.3.6
-----

To avoid receiving the warning when you start MATLAB, you can contact
MathWorks support for a patch. http://www.mathworks.com/contact_TS.html

Kind regards,
Greg