bugs: dynamic libraries, xconsole, xdm

[ian <ian.q@usa.net>]

some bugs I've encountered while upgrading to glibc-2.2.1 and
xfree86-4.0.2:


xfig_3.2.3.c-4

This binary is dynamically linked to a library called 'libXaw3d.so.7',
which as far as I can tell exists nowhere; it's not in the xaw3dg
package from stable, testing, or unstable. I don't know how this could
happen; however, after making a symlink from libXaw3d.so.7 to
libXaw3d.so.6 and running ldconfig, it appears to work OK.


libgtk1.2_1.2.8-3.0.1

This library is unusable because:

  error while loading shared libraries:
  /usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0: undefined symbol: lstat

Here's a relevant quote from /usr/include/sys/stat.h
(packaged in libc6.1-dev_2.2.1-1):

/* To allow the `struct stat' structure and the file type `mode_t'
   bits to vary without changing shared library major version number,
   the `stat' family of functions and `mknod' are in fact inline
   wrappers around calls to `xstat', `fxstat', `lxstat', and `xmknod',
   which all take a leading version-number argument designating the
   data structure and bits used.  <bits/stat.h> defines _STAT_VER with
   the version number corresponding to `struct stat' as defined in
   that file; and _MKNOD_VER with the version number corresponding to
   the S_IF* macros defined therein.  It is arranged that when not
   inlined these function are always statically linked; that way a
   dynamically-linked executable always encodes the version number
   corresponding to the data structures it uses, so the `x' functions
   in the shared library can adapt without needing to recompile all
   callers.  */

Further inspection of this header file reveals that lstat() is an
external reference only under the following conditions:

#if defined __USE_BSD || defined __USE_XOPEN_EXTENDED
# ifndef __USE_FILE_OFFSET64
/* Get file attributes about FILE and put them in BUF.
   If FILE is a symbolic link, do not follow it.  */
extern int lstat (__const char *__restrict __file,
                  struct stat *__restrict __buf) __THROW;
# else
...
# endif
...
#endif

The library libc-2.2.1.so does not contain the symbol lstat, but does
define the symbols __lxstat and __lxstat64, as suggested by the header
file.  I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but clearly
something is wrong. It looks like it might be related to the large
file (>4GB) support in glibc-2.2.


xconsole (from xbase-clients_4.0.2-1)

I found that this program was consuming 80% of the CPU time on a
275MHz PC64. This can't be right. xdm_4.0.2-1 runs this program by
default; I had to disable it (/etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup).


xdm_4.0.2-1

Finally, xdm itself takes about five minutes to start up, again on a
275MHz PC64. This is independent of the xconsole problem mentioned
above. I know that the problem is not with the X-server, because
startx brings it up much faster.  Something must be wrong; the xdm log
file is no help, because it's just a condensed version of the X-server
log. There doesn't appear to be any xdm-specific information in it;
perhaps this is a clue.


I hope this information is helpful to somebody.


Ian Bruce


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