Latest Tarball Problems

[Kevin Musick <kmusick@teldar.com>]

I've been using the Hurd successfully for some time, but I recently
installed the latest tarball (March 3 I believe) and am now having
problems using GCC.  It gives me the following error:

ld: /lib/libc.so.0.2: _del_sysdep_start: invalid version 6 (max 5)
/lib/libc.so.0.2: could not read symbols: Bad value

If I check my GCC version using "gcc -v" I get:

Reading specs from /lib/gcc-lib/i486-gnu/2.7.2.2/specs
gcc version 2.7.2.2

I downloaded the gcc_2.91.66-1.2.deb package, but when I attempt to
install it using "dpkg -i" I get the following:

Preparing to replace gcc 2.91.66-1.2
   gcc depends on libc0.2 (>= 2.0); however,
        libc.0.2 is not configured

I get similar messages that cpp (>=2.91.66) is not configured, and
binutils (>= 2.9.1) is not configured.  It seems by these messages that
dpkg thinks the version I'm running is already the newer version.  I
next tried to install libc0.2_2.1.2-10.deb, but then I get:

Preparing to replace libc0.2 2.1.2-10
Version of dpkg with working epoch support not yet configured.
   Please use dpkg --configure dpkg

Ok, fine.  So I do that, and I get:

dpkg depends on perl5
Package perl-5.005 which provides perl5 is not configured yet
dpkg depends on libc0.2 (>= 2.1)

Hmmm.  Am I getting these problems because I use the tarball install
method?  I've NEVER been able to get the debian package manager to
install anything.  If I should wipe the system clean and re-install
using the packages, is there a list of which packages should be
installed and in which order to get a functional system?  I'm a little
leary of doing that, since dpkg never works for me, but I'll try it if
it will help.

Kevin Musick
kmusick@teldar.com