X11 and libc5 conflict

[Major A <phy10296@physcip.uni-stuttgart.de>]

Hi there,

I came across the same problem as some of you trying to run libc5 programs
on debian. The problem is not solved by simply getting a libc6 version of
the program, as for a number of programs such a version simply does not
exist.

The problem is that libc5 programs that use libXt.so.6 or other X11 libs
do not work with the latest debian xlib6g package. I found out that this
might have to do with the C compiler: on my personal PC, I always compile
X11 from the sources, and I only found this problem when I compiled it
with egcs-1.1.1. In this release of egcs, the handling of shared libs
changed, so for some reason this compiler makes libX11.so depend on
libc.so.6, and therefore on the glibc ld.so loader! If I recompile with an
older version of gcc, all is fine. It also helps to remove the "%{shared:
-lc}" in the /usr/lib/gcc-lib/.../specs file and recompile with egcs (you 
have to reset the specs file afterwards, or you may get problems...).

I am quite sure that this problem does have to do with the handling of
shared libraries in egcs, so I suggest that others should confirm this
theory and change the debian xlib6g package to one that works properly.
(It used to work some time ago!).

BTW, other distributions do have the same problem, so still none is better
than debian.

Cheers, thanks in advance

           Andras