Install/upgrade aaa_elflibs ?

[Mikhail Zotov]

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]

Post by Mikhail Zotov
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 ;-)
[..]

[Stuart Winter]

Post by Stuart Winter

Post by Mikhail Zotov
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.

[Mikhail Zotov]

Post by Stuart Winter

Post by Mikhail Zotov
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.

[snip]

Post by Stuart Winter
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]

Post by Mikhail Zotov
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.

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

/me sips

[SkeeBall]

Post by Stuart Winter

Post by Mikhail Zotov
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.

Post by Mikhail Zotov
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.