Fix for GLIBC's /etc/libc.so ?

[Kevin Buettner]

On Nov 28, 12:06pm, Jason wrote:

> [...] but I am still giving serious thought to moving the whole
> thing into a subdirectory and installing something fresh.

I think this would be a good idea.  Get yourself a spare disk
if you can and do a fresh install on this disk.  Then mount
the partitions from your present system as needed to fetch
all configuration information, old versions of libc, etc.

> Might be nice to have a box that at least somewhat resembles what
> everyone else is using as well, more and more stuff comes inside a
> .rpm instead of a tarball these days, oddly enough, ive even seen
> people distribute source in rpms, though I am not quite sure what
> the point of that is...

Are you referring to SRPMS?  The idea behind this mechanism is to
distribute the pristine sources (usually as a .tar.gz file) along with
other (usually minor) patches and automated build instructions.  Then,
by issuing the appropriate command, it is possible to extract the
sources, configure and build them, and even install them.  (There are
different options which will accomplish varying amounts of this...)

I have found this to be incredibly cool because there have been times
in the past when I've found a bug and want to compile the utility or
application in question myself (with debugging information in place). 
Having an SRPM means that I will be able to recreate exactly the
binary (and other package related configury) created by the RPM
packager.