Re: [Evolution] Evolution 1.3 beta install screws up /etc/ld.so.conf

[Mark Gordon <mtgordon ximian com>]

On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 14:52, Cliff Wells wrote:
> Two days ago I decided to give Evo 1.3 a try.  Fired up red-carpet,
> installed it and all the required components.  In the final stages of
> the install (executing rpm), suddenly apps started dying and finally my
> screen went ballistic (difficult to describe, but basically I could see
> the desktop, with every other scanline being offset by some amount).
>
> Hit the reset switch.  System comes up but I get errors on boot about
> sshd not being able to load libkr5.so.3, xfs not being able to load
> libxfont.so.1.  Of course X won't start, so I'm at a login prompt.  I
> start poking around and next thing you know I can't even do an 'ls' (I
> forget the exact error message).
>
> Reboot (via reset switch as 'init 6' also fails).  Everything starts
> working again.
>
> Today I decide to see if things had gotten better, fire up red-carpet,
> it informs me that there are updates for 1.3 (good, I think).  Same
> thing, only this time a reboot (or 2 or 3) doesn't fix it.
>
> After a brief moment of panic (okay, minutes of panic and cursing).  I
> decide to take a look at /etc/ld.so.conf.  Two important things are
> missing: /lib and /usr/lib.  I add these, run ldconfig and everything is
> fine.

Very odd, especially considering the following from the ldconfig man
page:

DESCRIPTION
       ldconfig creates the necessary links and cache (for use by the runâtime
       linker, ld.so) to the most recent shared libraries found in the  direcâ
       tories  specified on the command line, in the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and
       in the trusted directories (/usr/lib and /lib).

That rather suggests that you shouldn't need /lib or /usr/lib in
/etc/ld.so.conf; ldconfig uses those dirs by default.  I don't, and my
machine runs fine.  If you do, then something is badly broken about how
your machine is handling shared libraries.

I suspect the problems on your machine are completely independent of the
1.3 beta.  Any package that ran ldconfig (i.e. anything providing shared
libs) probably would have caused similar symptoms.

-Mark Gordon