glibc 2.36 breaks hardware compatibility

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djemos
Salix Warrior
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glibc 2.36 breaks hardware compatibility

Post by djemos »

glibc new version is 2.36. This brakes hardware compatibility with old cpus. I have tried to boot a few distributions iso which have adopt glibc-2.36. None of them can boot. I do not think a 2015, 5th generation i3 8GB of memory, lenovo g510 laptop is useless. It is very productive and fast. I use it for developing.
I really get angry when windows 10 run fine in this laptop and all linux distributions until glibc 2.35 while slackware current or ubuntu or arch or fedora or manjaro etc iso that include glibc-2.36 cannot boot and installed in that machine.
People who run slackware current doing an update to glibc-2.36 break the system and make it unusable. They have to reinstall glibc-2.35 to make it usable. I use linux since 1998 and this is the first time it happens.
I do not know how many users have been affected by this. You cannot break the foundation. The whole building will collapse.
What glibc has done is not good for linux world.
hugok
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Re: glibc 2.36 breaks hardware compatibility

Post by hugok »

I only have an old laptop. An acer extensa 5620Z "Intel Pentium Dual CPU T2390 1.86GHz/1.87GHz with 3GB RAM 64bit" from the year of 2008 if I am not mistaken and it has run nearly all Linux distros that I have ever tested(I have to test them for translation purposes) and so far the only ones that don't run by default are the Red Hat based (Alma Linux 9, Rocky Linux 9) and maybe it's not even about glibc, I don't know... I also tried to run the latest Current Live Edition of Slackware from our friend Alien BOB and it doesn't run either.
But again, I'm not a tech person and I dont't work in IT, I only know a few things :roll:
Hugo Carvalho
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Papasot
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Location: Patras, Greece

Re: glibc 2.36 breaks hardware compatibility

Post by Papasot »

Dimitri, as you already know, I am a victim of this glibc-2.36 incompatibility. In my case it was a much weaker laptop than yours (which however was good enough for both Salix and Slackel). I thought the incompatibility only affects really old and obsolete hardware as in my case with this laptop. I didn't know even a fifth-generation i3 is also affected - with 8 Gb RAM your machine could run GNU/Linux for many years to come.
Salix 15.0 should be ok, but since Slackware-Current is not, future versions of Slackware-based distributions wouldn't work As far I can tell many distributions use glibc-2.32 or 2.33 for now. Perhaps this explains why I didn't find much information about the glibc-2.36 issue. The announcement for glibc-2.36 is very Spartan in the "Changes affecting compatibility" section.

If they won't fix their own mess with glibc-2.36, I can only see two solutions for the future of "incompatible" CPUs: either a musl-based distribution (but this comes with its own problems), or a BSD installation (which is a rather hardcore decision). In my case, I opted for FreeBSD in this old laptop, as a long-standing solution.
I am also using Linux since 1998, and it is the first time I see something like that happening. Torvalds said you can never break userspace, but glibc is GNU and, as we all know, Torvalds is not in very good terms with GNU (and even for his kernel he also said "we can't support old hardware forever" - although this is not a kernel problem).
A pleasant detail in this forum: several people pick a picture of their pet as their avatar. Who am I to do otherwise? ;-)
djemos
Salix Warrior
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Joined: 29. Dec 2009, 13:45
Location: Greece

Re: glibc 2.36 breaks hardware compatibility

Post by djemos »

@hugok
This lenovo g510 is the only laptop i have, since the other one lenovo g50-80 died. I cannot afford to pay 650€ to buy a new one because of glibc-2.36 problem.
It is ridiculous.

@Papasot
It is not a kernel problem. I have tried to compile glibc-2.36 with different kernels. Build fails with illegal instruction message. This means hardware compatibility problem. This is why iso distributions with glibc-2.36, having different kernels cannot boot.
Glibc-2.35 build without problem. I tried to build glibc-2.36 in salix-xfce 15.0 in this laptop and build failed. Same message about illegal instruction.
It is glibc-2.36 problem.

The bad thing is that i cannot run slackel and slackware current with glibc-2.36 on this laptop the only one i have. So it is not good for slackel developing too.
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SalixManiac
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Re: glibc 2.36 breaks hardware compatibility

Post by SalixManiac »

Hello everyone,

If it is a x86_64 problem maybe you can try something like that:
#!/bin/sh
## build glibc-$VERSION for Slackware
i686)
OPTIMIZ="-O3 -march=i686"
LIBDIRSUFFIX=""
;;
athlon)
OPTIMIZ="-O3 -march=athlon"
LIBDIRSUFFIX=""
;;
s390)
OPTIMIZ="-O3"
LIBDIRSUFFIX=""
;;
x86_64)
OPTIMIZ="-O3 -march=nehalem -fPIC"
LIBDIRSUFFIX="64"
Good luck to the heroes of the Slackware-Current.
Colin Chapman “light is right” those last words "the middle pedal is for cowards"
djemos
Salix Warrior
Posts: 1433
Joined: 29. Dec 2009, 13:45
Location: Greece

Re: glibc 2.36 breaks hardware compatibility

Post by djemos »

glibc-2.36 cannot even build in systems with hardware incompatibility. Using an already build of glibc-2.36 from slackware current to update the glibc-2.35 system breaks with illegal instruction.
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