tlug: PJE

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Eric" == Eric S Standlee <fwiw3980@example.com> writes:

    Eric> I cannot install canna because rpm says:

    Eric> 	libncurses.so.3.0 is needed by canna-3.5....rpm

    Eric> I installed ncurses-4.2-8.i386.rpm and it still says that.
    Eric> I got this off the PJE ftp server, should I try the ncurses
    Eric> and canna off of the pht server?

Yes.  They were linked against libc6 so you should be OK.

Use PJE as guide to what's available.  If possible use a commercial
distribution's versions.

In general, since the tools are compatible, you can probably migrate
to TurboLinux piece by piece.  I'd say this is your best bet.  In
fact, you might even want to apply to PHT to be a beta tester, you
could stop apologizing for asking questions ;-) Seriously, questions
are exactly what they want in a beta tester.  But it does involve more
time on your part, and some risk of downtime.  (Risk of data loss
shouldn't be any greater than with a release, unless you change
subsystems, eg sendmail -> qmail, which is always dangerous.  but they
won't do that without warning you.)

    Eric> See if I have this right, to run kinput Ihave to have canna,
    Eric> but to have canna, I need ncurses...  Is there something
    Eric> else that I will need...

Oh brother, what you don't know can hurt you.  You got the analysis
right but you need a little background.

You've been hosed by RedHat hype.  Both Debian and TurboLinux have
worked hard to do the transition from libc5 to libc6 (aka glibc)
transparently.  RedHat chose to be first, some how, some way, and
devil take the unsupported software.

The problem is that libc5 and libc6 are not link-compatible.  (The
reasons for this are manifold; suffice it to say that the libc5
maintainer's name is used as a curse in some quarters.)  Thus it is
not possible for _any_ software (ie, Canna and ncurses) linked with
libc5 to use the libc6 libraries on your RH 5.x system.

After the PHT RPMs, the first thing to try is to look for
"libc5-compat" software on RedHat.  (That's the Debian name for it,
RHL's may be different.)  These are packages linked to libc5
specifically intended to be installed alongside libc6.  With any luck,
you should be able to find a recent libc5 (not that recent RedHat
libc5s are 100% trustworthy, YMMV but you should be OK) and libncurses
and anything else Canna or its dependent libraries want.

Next best is to compile Canna yourself under libc6.  The fact that RH
5.1 isn't supported yet suggests that just getting the source RPM and
doing `rpm --build' won't work :-(.

If that don't work, try alien and the Debian versions of
libc5-compat.  (Moderately dangerous to the health of your system.)

The last thing you can try to do is try to find a libncurses.so.3.x
somewhere, maybe in the old RedHat distributions (4.2 is most recent
libc5, I think).  Trying to install this will probably complain about
more recent versions, and you can --force-install (whatever the
correct RedHat option is).  Very dangerous, all your curses apps may
stop working.  Make sure you have a few free terminal windows open, I
think bash links to curses so you'd lose the ability to start new
shells.

You could switch to Debian or TurboLinux.  Both of those would involve
wiping your /, /usr, and /var partitions first for safety; you can
probably save most of your work by (su; tar cvzf homes.tar.gz /root
/home /var/spool) but you might very well lose something, check that
carefully.

Or you can tell your Canna-using apps that cannaserver is
tanko.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (that's me), port 5680, send me email (I
currently block pretty much everything outside of Tsukuba-dai) and you
can use mine.  Probably very slow....

-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences        Tel/fax: +1 (298) 53-5091
--------------------------------------------------------------
Next Nomikai: 18 September, 19:30 Tengu TokyoEkiMae 03-3275-3691
Next Meeting: 10 October, Tokyo Station Yaesu central gate 12:30
--------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsor: PHT, makers of TurboLinux http://www.pht.co.jp