[CentOS] Downgrade libgcc & gcc packages (is there a clean way)

Mon Aug 9 18:21:42 UTC 2010
Whit Blauvelt <whit at transpect.com>

On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 01:06:15PM -0500, Dan Burkland wrote:

> I have been tasked with "fixing" one of our CentOS boxes by somehow
> downgrading the libgcc and gcc packages to a specific version (Required by
> the Oracle Grid Control client). Normally I'd just remove and reinstall
> the packages however removing libgcc is no fun as I found out the hard way
> it breaks pretty much every package including rpm & yum. Is there an
> elegant way to downgrade the currently installed libgcc & gcc packages?

You could build your own gcc and libgcc from source of the right vintage,
putting them where they won't interfere with the CentOS versions. It takes
awhile, but gcc is quite capable of bootstrapping itself. 

How to get Oracle Grid Control working with that might remain a problem. Are
the libgcc libraries it wants to see in a separate namespace from the
current CentOS ones? If so you could just install them alongside and be
happy. If not, you might need to do something like set up a chroot for Grid
Control, with its preferred libraries there.

Whit