retitle 713914 squeeze->wheezy: reminder that kernel should be >= 2.6.32 before
upgrade
reassign 713914 release-notes
tags 713914 + wheezy
affects 713914 + libc6
quit
Hi Thomas,
Thomas Bleher wrote:
> When updating Squeeze to Wheezy, I encountered the following error on
> two separate machines:
>
> WARNING: this version of the GNU libc requires kernel version
> 2.6.26 or later. Please upgrade your kernel before installing
> glibc.
>
> It would be very helpful to add more information why 2.6.26 is required,
> and what would break when using an older kernel.
>
> For example:
> - Does this libc not run at all on older kernels (say because of a new
> syscall interface used)?
> - is just one specific feature broken (say NSS)?
> - will it be much slower because of feature XY?
> - etc.
I don't think it makes sense to try to trick it into working with an
older kernel --- simpler to rebuild glibc with a different
--enable-kernel= (__LINUX_KERNEL_VERSION) value.
Based on sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/kernel-features.h, by assuming a
kernel >= 2.6.32, glibc can rely on support for:
- the utimensat() syscall
- private futexes
- the fallocate() syscall
- SOCK_CLOEXEC, pipe2(), eventfd2(), signalfd4(), accept4(), etc
- the FUTEX_CLOCK_REALTIME flag
- the AT_RANDOM auxiliary vector
- preadv() and pwritev()
- F_GETOWN_EX
Missing support for pipe2(), accept4(), etc would be especially
problematic. So I'm afraid wheezy can't run without rebuilding
eglibc for this older kernel.
[...]
> The requirement for a new kernel should also really be mentioned in the
> release notes.
Reassigning to release-notes. The introduction says
Please note that we only support and document upgrading from
the previous release of Debian (in this case, the upgrade from
6.0). If you need to upgrade from older releases, we suggest
you read previous editions of the release notes and upgrade to
6.0 first.
but I agree that it would be helpful for e.g. section 4.2 "Checking
system status" to warn about the required kernel.
Thanks for writing, and hope that helps.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
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