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Install/upgrade aaa_elflibs ?

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blah@blahyandex.ru Mikhail Zotov

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Jan 26, 2005, 1:15:39 AM1/26/05
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Hello everybody,

slackware-current now has new versions of aaa_elflibs and aaa_base.
AFAIU, there is no need to upgrade aaa_base. But what do you do
with aaa_elflibs? Its slack_desk says that "this package should be
not upgraded or reinstalled." (To be fair, I have reinstalled it
once in Slack-10.0. I had to fix a number of things by hands then.)
On the other hand, UPGRADE.TXT does _not_ contain any warnings
concerning upgrading aaa_elflibs.

--

Mikhail

Stuart Winter

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Jan 26, 2005, 5:13:25 AM1/26/05
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On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 09:15:39 +0300, wrote:

> not upgraded or reinstalled." (To be fair, I have reinstalled it
> once in Slack-10.0. I had to fix a number of things by hands then.)
> On the other hand, UPGRADE.TXT does _not_ contain any warnings
> concerning upgrading aaa_elflibs.

Here is what Pat says about aaa_elflibs (slightly edited) some time ago.
I hope this helps explain the purpose of aaa_elflibs and answers the question
of why it should not be upgraded.

[..]
Of course, aaa_elflibs (kludgey as it is) contains a few nuggets that really aren't
found anywhere else. I've also been meaning to warn people that if they
see a new aaa_elflibs released that upgrading to it is a REALLY DUMB IDEA.
The aaa_ packages are intended for one time installation (though
reinstalling aaa_base is a lot safer than reinstalling aaa_elflibs).
aaa_elflibs is mostly to provide a net for people who would otherwise
install a functionally incomplete system to cut down on the amount
of help people need if they do not install required packages. It
wouldn't be such a bad package except that some projects (like, say CUPS,
or ALSA) don't tend to increment library versions when they release new ones,
so ancient ones in aaa_elflibs get copied over new ones, and things begin to
mysteriously fail. Fun, huh?

I've been meaning to look at a solution, but previous attempts like
staging libraries from /lib/incoming and considering if they should be
installed had other problems. A nice side effect of the filename
collisions is that having something listed in aaa_elflibs also prevents
removing the newer library when people run around removing things at
random so they can have 60GB free instead of 59GB ;-)
[..]
--
www.armedslack.org
| "Washing machines live longer with Calgon"

Stuart Winter

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Jan 26, 2005, 5:26:58 AM1/26/05
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On 26 Jan 2005 10:13:25 GMT, use.re...@interlude.org.uk wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 09:15:39 +0300, wrote:
>
>> not upgraded or reinstalled." (To be fair, I have reinstalled it
>> once in Slack-10.0. I had to fix a number of things by hands then.)
>> On the other hand, UPGRADE.TXT does _not_ contain any warnings
>> concerning upgrading aaa_elflibs.
>
> Here is what Pat says about aaa_elflibs (slightly edited) some time ago.
> I hope this helps explain the purpose of aaa_elflibs and answers the question
> of why it should not be upgraded.

Oh, and to answer the question about why it is not in UPGRADE.TXT:
if you're upgrading every package in the OS, then there is no need
to worry about aaa_elflibs because its library versions are identical to
those contained within the main packages.

For example:

turrican [a] # tar ztvvf aaa_elflibs-10.1.0-i486-1.tgz | grep curses.so
-rwxr-xr-x root/root 253584 2005-01-24 17:02:29 lib/libncurses.so.5.4
turrican [a] # tar ztvvf ../l/ncurses-5.4-i486-2.tgz|grep curses.so
-rwxr-xr-x root/root 253600 2004-02-17 23:22:33 lib/libncurses.so.5.4
turrican [a] #

This is why it is not mentioned in the UPGRADE.TXT.

A short while ago, elflibs was renamed to aaa_elflibs (the name it now has) so
that it would always be installed prior to any other packages.
This was so that if you were installing Slackware-current then you wouldn't
run into the situation in the following example:

a/aaa_elflibs contains bzip2 libraries from a/bzip2
Because the packages are installed according to their alphabetic precedence,
it meant that bzip2 would be installed first. Remembering that aaa_elblibs
(or 'elflibs' as it was called previously) was only updated right before
a new release of Slackware, you run into the problem, or run the risk that
the installation goes like this:
- a/bzip2 is installed -- this is the very latest bzip2
- <more packages installed>
- elflibs package is installed
This package has not been updated since the last release of Slackware
it contains ancient libraries -- including an old copy of bzip2's .so.

It was renamed 'aaa_elflibs' to work around this problem.
This also explains why you should not upgradepkg aaa_elflibs *without*
also upgrading the entire OS.

I hope that goes some way to explaining it -- If not then let me know and I'll
go and get some more coffee and give it another whirl :-)

s.

blah@blahyandex.ru Mikhail Zotov

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Jan 26, 2005, 7:10:06 AM1/26/05
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Stuart Winter wrote on Wednesday 26 January 2005 13:26:

>> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 09:15:39 +0300, Mikhail Zotov wrote:
>>
>> not upgraded or reinstalled." (To be fair, I have reinstalled it
>> once in Slack-10.0. I had to fix a number of things by hands then.)
>> On the other hand, UPGRADE.TXT does _not_ contain any warnings
>> concerning upgrading aaa_elflibs.
> Oh, and to answer the question about why it is not in UPGRADE.TXT:
[snip]

> I hope that goes some way to explaining it -- If not then let me know and
> I'll go and get some more coffee and give it another whirl :-)

LOL. :-) Thanks a lot, Stuart! I hope I see the situation:
one who is running -current should upgrade everything but
aaa_{base,elflibs}.

Still, there may be sense to get some more coffee ... to get ready
to another dumb question. :-)

Best regards,
Mikhail

Stuart Winter

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Jan 26, 2005, 10:04:45 AM1/26/05
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On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 15:10:06 +0300, wrote:

> LOL. :-) Thanks a lot, Stuart! I hope I see the situation:
> one who is running -current should upgrade everything but
> aaa_{base,elflibs}.

Exactly, because aaa_elflibs will (up until a few days ago) have contained
libraries from when Slackware 10 was first released.

> Still, there may be sense to get some more coffee ... to get ready
> to another dumb question. :-)

/me sips

SkeeBall

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Jan 27, 2005, 10:12:16 PM1/27/05
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Stuart Winter wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 15:10:06 +0300, wrote:
>
>> LOL. :-) Thanks a lot, Stuart! I hope I see the situation:
>> one who is running -current should upgrade everything but
>> aaa_{base,elflibs}.
>
> Exactly, because aaa_elflibs will (up until a few days ago) have contained
> libraries from when Slackware 10 was first released.
>
>> Still, there may be sense to get some more coffee ... to get ready
>> to another dumb question. :-)
>
> /me sips

Thanks from me as well, I wish I'd have known this before I upgraded
aaa_base and aaa_elflibs. I have been noticing a few little hinky problems
but didn't know what the problem might be. Oh well, I can fix it and
running -current I expect little hinky problems anyway.
--
Regards

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