Making NPTL the default for FC3, vanilla i386 support
Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha
strange at nsk.no-ip.org
Wed May 19 20:45:37 UTC 2004
On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 08:24:35AM -0400, Jakub Jelinek wrote:
> 1) statically linked programs, no matter whether threaded or not,
> will now require a NPTL capable kernel (one from RHL 9, RHEL3,
> FC1, FC2 or any 2.6.x kernel should be enough), dynamically linked
> programs using -lpthread in some cases as well (e.g. if they are using
> the functions present in NPTL but not in LinuxThreads)
When compiling static programs, one can always specify the location for
the LT version. A section about the change in the release notes for the
next FC version could have that information.
> 2) while previously blindly setting LD_ASSUME_KERNEL environment
> variable at the beginning of large shell scripts around some
> programs and sometimes even in /etc/profile.d/* often worked,
> now the chances are lower (any time such shell script
> runs a program which requires NPTL the program would fail
> to run). LD_ASSUME_KERNEL should now be really only used
> on the command line of the broken program which needs
> LinuxThreads. E.g.
> LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 /opt/FOOW/bin/barx --args xyz
I'd rather be able to set flags on program files with that information:
# setth lt_fs $(find /opt/java -type f -perm -u+x)
So there would be no need for individual users to know when a
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL is needed, no need for sysadmins to create wrapper
scripts, and no need to go through an obscure shell script finding the
place where the final binary is called.
> 3) NPTL has not been ported to i386, only i486+, x86_64,
...
> This means though that almost no FC3 programs can run
> on vanilla i386{SX,DX} CPUs. Is this a problem to anyone?
I don't see myself in need to run FC3 programs on i386. However, as long
as it's possible to do a CC="gcc -I/usr/include/linuxthreads
-L/usr/lib{,64}/linuxthreads" rpmbuild --rebuild package.src.rpm, I'll be
able to.
> Now, the question is, as at least all statically linked programs
> built on Fedora Core 3 and many dynamically linked ones will require
> i486+ atomic instructions (xaddl, cmpxchgl), if we should change
> rpm architecture of FC3 rpms or not.
Well, if those .i386.rpms can't run in a i386, then they shouldn't be
named as such. :)
I'd go with the second alternative.
Regards,
Luciano Rocha
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