upgrade glibc

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am a Unix person crazy enough to attempt upgrading the core C library, glibc, by hand. The first, naive attempt failed, of course: simply copying the new library files over the old ones renders the system unusable.

Here I found a helpful text by Dave Storrer which helped me navigate around the most dangerous cliffs.

Here is an outline:

1. compile glibc (current version 2.11.2)
2. install it into a temporary directory
3. remove ld.so.cache
4. rename the critical library files, i.e. those having the version number 2.11.2 in the name
5. install everything in the final destination
6. rename the new files back, one by one...
7. ...immediately linking them with the command "/sbin/ldconfig -l ..."
8. don't strip any library symbols