On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Alfred von Campe alfred@von-campe.com wrote:
We have a third party shared library from a vendor that requires glib 2.15 or newer. We are using CentOS 6.6 which comes with glibc 2.12, and I know it can't be replaced as it's an integral part of the OS.
However, is it possible to build a glib 2.15 RPM from source to be installed in /opt/centos (or somewhere else other than /usr/lib) so that I can link the one application that requires the third party shared library with this version of glib? If so, does anyone have instructions on how to build such an RPM, or better yet, has already build such an RPM?
Tell your vendor you want a centos 6 version of the library, it's really not a huge ask, esp if you are paying them. If they say no, do a new install of centos 7 and run it on a different box. It's the only reasonable thing to do, and if you do anything else and make anyone else support it, you are a bad person.
If it's a lack of hardware, CentOS 6 has virtualization built in, turn the server into a VM host and make a centos 7 guest. A one off VM is awful, but better than any other hatchet job you may come up with.
Don't do these. For real. They are super fun exercises, but much like linux from scratch, they are painful, hard to maintain, and implementing them would get you removed from my development team.
Try following https://gist.github.com/ldx/9116170 but do a cent7 chroot install instead. That would probably work, and you'd be able to patch both systems with regular yum updates. I've done something similar on debian boxes in the past and it surprisingly worked. This is the least bad of the terrible options I've provided (assuming it works).
Install centos 7 in a vm. Get your app over there and see if it runs. If it does, run ldd on the box and copy all the dependencies to a directory on your cent6 box. You will have to run ldd on all the libraries you copy as well to get their dependencies. You will want to script that. Actually don't script it. You will give up with in 20 libraries. If you do get all the dependencies, you can override the library path by running your app like LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/yourlibrarydirectory yourapp Congrats, you have a total point-in-time one off, and you should feel bad about yourself.
If you google steam and centos 6 you will find plenty of people who have update glibc to a newer version with zero ramifications. Those people are tempting sirens luring you to the rocks. Just know you will never get another security update to glibc ever again, and let me hammer this home, if you make this machine someone else's responsibility, you will end up in a very special circle of hell (some where near carrot top and the "can you hear me now" guy).