Bug 110290

Summary:	Latest glibc update breaks gnome/X
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	John Ketchum <johnk>
Component:	glibc	Assignee:	Jakub Jelinek <jakub>
Status:	CLOSED WORKSFORME	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	8.0	CC:	fweimer, lare
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2004-09-25 21:03:12 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description John Ketchum 2003-11-17 22:52:11 UTC

Description of problem:
After installing the latest versions of glibc and related rpms:
glibc-utils-2.3.2-4.80.8.i386.rpm
glibc-devel-2.3.2-4.80.8.i386.rpm
glibc-debug-2.3.2-4.80.8.i386.rpm
glibc-common-2.3.2-4.80.8.i386.rpm
glibc-2.3.2-4.80.8.i386.rpm
ncsd-2.3.2-4.80.8.i386.rpm
glibc-profile-2.3.2-4.80.8.i386.rpm
postgresql-libs-7.2.4-5.80.i386.rpm
(also tried forcing glibc-2.3.2-4.80.8.i686.rpm, which didn't make 
any difference)
I observed the following symptoms:
When attempting to log on to Gnome, the system froze in the login 
process at the transitional screen between the login prompt and the 
desktop, for 3-4 minutes, then completed the login process showing 
the Gnome desktop,with the Workspace Switcher missing. When I started 
an X application like xterm or xemacs, it came up in the upper left 
ahnd corner of the screen in a non-resizable, non-movable window. 
With more than one x app up, there was no way to switch betwee napp 
windows.

I could log in remotely, but if I tried to run an X app, like Xemacs, 
from the remote host, it didn't display on the remote host, and after 
several minutes, the terminal session froze and was terminated.

I fixed the problem by forcing an install of the previous versions of 
the above rpms (glibc-2.3.2-4.80.6.i686.rpm, etc., and postgresql-
libs--7.2.3-5.80.i386.rpm) --- 
rpm -Uvh --force glibc-2.3.2-4.80.6.i686.rpm .........
After doing this, Gnome is behaving normally again.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
glibc-2.3.2-4.80.8

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.install lates glibc and related packages, as above
2.login to Gnome
3.run xterm or xemacs
   
Actual results:
Gnome is broken

Expected results:
Normal operation of Gnome

Additional info:

Comment 1 Andrew Lare 2003-11-26 17:58:13 UTC

I had the exact same thing happen on one of my systems.  Three others
are not exhibiting any difficulty, but I had to do the same workaround
on the affected system.  One precursor (maybe) that I noticed on the
affected system occurred after patch installation:

Starting OpenOffice.org ...
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice.bin: relocation error:
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/libvcl641li.so: undefined symbol:
FT_Set_Hint_Flags

Ngnome-calculator: relocation error: /usr/lib/libXft.so.2: undefined
symbol: FT_Set_Hint_Flags


Once I reinstalled the previous glibc version, these errors
disappeared as well.

Comment 2 Ulrich Drepper 2004-08-26 04:36:28 UTC

We definitely have never heard about any issues like that with any of
the updates.  People would have complaint a lot.

The FT_Set_Hint_flags thing points to freetype.  Maybe an
incompatibility in the versions you were using.  It might be that the
problem was previously hidden by a bug in glibc, but if the new
version says the symbol is missing, I trust that.  You can see for
yourself, run

  readelf -s /usr/lib/freetype.so | fgrep FT_Set_Hint_Flags

I'll close the bug shortly unless substantial evidence is shown that
there is something wrong in *today's* glibc code.

Most compatibility problems attributed to glibc are bugs in
applications which are exposed by glibc.

Comment 3 Ulrich Drepper 2004-09-25 21:03:12 UTC

Closing the bug.  No response received and it seems to be unrelated to
glibc in any case.