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Re: A symlink that stays



On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:50:41 -0500, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> said:

> On 06/18/08 21:25, Hubert Chathi wrote:
>> On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:00:14 +0200, coolzone@it.dk said:
>> 
>>> Hi.  I am installing ewire on a customers server and it needs a
>>> symlink from libssl.so.0.9.8 to libssl.so, I am worried if apt
>>> updates the version and the symlink suddenly stops working.
>> 
>>> Any suggestions as to how to keep track of this? Or another clever
>>> solution?
>> 
>> The symlink should be installed in the libssl-dev package.

> Why?  Why not in libssl?

> IOW, why should a production server need to install -dev packages?

It shouldn't.  Any program (other than a linker) that requires that
symlink is broken.

The soname indicates the version of the ABI (Application Binary
Interface) for the library.  If a program tries to use the libssl.so
symlink, and was compiled against one version of OpenSSL, but finds a
different version of OpenSSL with a different ABI version, bad things
may happen.  That symlink really should only be used by the linker to
link against the latest version of the library at compile-time, and
shouldn't be used at run-time.

-- 
Hubert Chathi <uhoreg@debian.org> -- Jabber: hubert@uhoreg.ca
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA         http://www.uhoreg.ca/
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7  5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA


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