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If you're using RHEL, you've got a version of GLIBC that's too old, we're trying to figure out what to do about this without asking users to install a bunch of

If you're using RHEL, you've got a version of GLIBC that's too old, we're trying to figure out what to do about this without asking users to install a bunch of crazy stuff

tormeh 10y ago
I know dynamically linking to libraries is the Linux way, but wouldn't just bundling the correct version of glibc with the Slack app solve the problem? Sure, the app gets bigger, but a missing feature is worse than that, I would imagine.
- rayvd 10y ago
  Then Slack has to start tracking glibc updates and security fixes rather than relying on the OS. Might be acceptable overhead.
- TheDong 10y ago
  You cannot sanely statically link glibc. This is because libnss effectively has to (by definition of how /etc/nsswitch.conf works) be able to `dlopen` arbitrary files you don't know about, so statically linking it has no meaning or breaks that (you pick!). For this reason, it's painful-to-difficult to bundle glibc with a program, and it WILL break some networking configuration options if you do it, which is probably worse than messing up a feature on an ancient linux no one should be using :) The right solution to this, which for some dumb reason they don't want to do, is ship a different version of slack depending on your (distro, glibc) combo. For old RHEL and old Ubuntu, they just need to ship a version that is built against those old glibc versions. It's trivial if they just open source their application and ask Redhat and Canonical to maintain packages of them and provide sufficient motivation (read money) to convince them to also package them for these old distros. I don't know why the no-brainer idea of forcing redhat/canonical (who are experts on this glibc stuff and making debs and rpms in general) to maintain the slack packages for those distros hasn't occurred to them
  - xpaulbettsx 10y ago
    > The right solution to this, which for some dumb reason they don't want to do WebRTC requires GCC >= 4.9, which doesn't ship on RHEL or old Ubuntu, and upgrading to it would also upgrade the built glibc, which defeats the point.
codebeaker 10y ago
Got any info on what "too old" means here, I thought that glibc was supposed to claim ABI compatibility pretty broadly, or is there some specific regression/bug you're working around? Edit: reading my message back I came off as impolite, sorry - genuinely curious, I've had the same breakage myself, and we started using Skype in lieu.
sgt 10y ago
Almost for as long as I can remember, there have been problems with Linux and glibc (across different distros especially). What is actually the cause of this? Recurring ABI incompatibilities?

If you're using RHEL, you've got a version of GLIBC that's too old, we're trying to figure out what to do about this without asking users to install a bunch of crazy stuff

tormeh 10y ago

I know dynamically linking to libraries is the Linux way, but wouldn't just bundling the correct version of glibc with the Slack app solve the problem? Sure, the app gets bigger, but a missing feature is worse than that, I would imagine.

rayvd 10y ago
Then Slack has to start tracking glibc updates and security fixes rather than relying on the OS. Might be acceptable overhead.
TheDong 10y ago
You cannot sanely statically link glibc. This is because libnss effectively has to (by definition of how /etc/nsswitch.conf works) be able to `dlopen` arbitrary files you don't know about, so statically linking it has no meaning or breaks that (you pick!). For this reason, it's painful-to-difficult to bundle glibc with a program, and it WILL break some networking configuration options if you do it, which is probably worse than messing up a feature on an ancient linux no one should be using :) The right solution to this, which for some dumb reason they don't want to do, is ship a different version of slack depending on your (distro, glibc) combo. For old RHEL and old Ubuntu, they just need to ship a version that is built against those old glibc versions. It's trivial if they just open source their application and ask Redhat and Canonical to maintain packages of them and provide sufficient motivation (read money) to convince them to also package them for these old distros. I don't know why the no-brainer idea of forcing redhat/canonical (who are experts on this glibc stuff and making debs and rpms in general) to maintain the slack packages for those distros hasn't occurred to them
- xpaulbettsx 10y ago
  > The right solution to this, which for some dumb reason they don't want to do WebRTC requires GCC >= 4.9, which doesn't ship on RHEL or old Ubuntu, and upgrading to it would also upgrade the built glibc, which defeats the point.

codebeaker 10y ago

Got any info on what "too old" means here, I thought that glibc was supposed to claim ABI compatibility pretty broadly, or is there some specific regression/bug you're working around? Edit: reading my message back I came off as impolite, sorry - genuinely curious, I've had the same breakage myself, and we started using Skype in lieu.

sgt 10y ago

Almost for as long as I can remember, there have been problems with Linux and glibc (across different distros especially). What is actually the cause of this? Recurring ABI incompatibilities?