glibc update failed

Published on October 29th, 2006 in Gentoo

After a few weeks of being unable to automatically update my system (because I couldn’t update glibc-2.4-r3), I finally found the time to dig into this error a bit deeper and to finally solve it. This is the output I got:

checking whether autoconf works… yes
configure: error:
*** These critical programs are missing or too old: gcc
*** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.

!!! ERROR: sys-libs/glibc-2.4-r3 failed.
Call stack:
ebuild.sh, line 1546: Called dyn_compile
ebuild.sh, line 937: Called src_compile
glibc-2.4-r3.ebuild, line 1192: Called toolchain-glibc_src_compile
glibc-2.4-r3.ebuild, line 253: Called glibc_do_configure ‘nptl’
glibc-2.4-r3.ebuild, line 943: Called die

!!! failed to configure glibc
!!! If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.

Why would it say my gcc was too old, since I had the newest eBuild installed? A look at gcc –version showed that somehow, my system was still using gcc 3.3.6. Luckily, there’s a tool called gcc-config which will quickly take care of that. A “gcc-config -l” showed the following profiles on my machine:
[1] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.3.6 *
[2] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.3.6-hardened
[3] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.3.6-hardenednopie
[4] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.3.6-hardenednopiessp
[5] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.3.6-hardenednossp
[6] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6
[7] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-hardened
[8] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-hardenednopie
[9] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-hardenednopiessp
[10] i686-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-hardenednossp
[11] i686-pc-linux-gnu-4.1.1

Executing a “gcc-config 11″, since that was the profile of the new gcc version I wanted to use, quickly fixed the problem.

4 comments

Acidcrawl November 29th, 2006

This was extremely useful for me as I had the same exact problem, thanks!

Inzainio December 19th, 2006

This saved my butt, too. I’ll email you guys a few virtual beers

guynsfbay February 9th, 2007

After fighting this problem for a day I found your posted solution and it worked perfectly! Thanks, and cheers to the virtual beers!

Wink42 March 21st, 2007

Thanks from me as well