I need to run sybase-11.0.3.3 or 11.9.2 on centos5.

Because the glibc-2.5-24 of centos5 is too newer for sybase-11 and the known “seg fault” problem, I make a plan to install and run sybase11 in a chroot jail on centos5.

And in the chroot jail, there is a glibc-2.2.93 from Redhat8.0.

I've made many researches.

I've succeeded once (sybase11.0.3.3 running ok ), then I deleted the virtual machine since I thought all things were ok.

But after that, I've never succeeded and I still got the “segmentation fault” when booting the sybase server.

I think that something detail was important in that success, but I didn’t notice it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here’s my steps:

>>>On Redhat8.0:

(1)Install and run a sybase-11.0.3.3 instance. All things are ok.
# ldd $SYBASE/bin/dataserver
/lib/libNoVersion.so.1 => /lib/libNoVersion.so.1 (0×40013000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/i686/libm.so.6 (0x4001a000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (0×42000000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0×40000000)

>>>On CentOS5:

(2)Make a chroot jail:/home/dbroot. In the jail, there are these dirs:
/bin, /lib, /sbin, /var/lib/rpm, /usr/lib, /usr/bin, /dev, /proc, /sys, /tmp
mount -o bind /proc /home/dbroot/proc
mount -o bind /dev /home/dbroot/dev
mount -o bind /sys /home/dbroot/sys

(3)Move these dirs with all their subdirs & files from Redhat8.0 to CentOS jail(/home/dbroot):
/bin, /lib, /sbin, /var/lib/rpm, /usr/lib, /usr/bin

(4)Configure /etc/chroot.conf and /etc/pam.d/login to make sybase loginning into jail.

(5)In the jail, install sybase11
# chroot /home/dbroot
# ldconfig
# rpm -ivh sybase-11.0.3.3.rpm
# ldd /opt/sybase/bin/dataserver
/lib/libNoVersion.so.1 => /lib/libNoVersion.so.1 (0x006a4000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/i686/libm.so.6 (0×00446000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (0×42000000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x005d3000)

All seems to be right, the dataserver is based on just the same libraries as those on Redhat8.0.

(6)Login as sybase, of cause it’s into $jail/opt/sybase(/home/dbroot/opt/sybase) now.
$ export LD_POINTER_GUARD=0 (LD_POINTER_GUARD=1 is tried also, no help)
$ sybinit

I still get the “segmentation fault” when trying to boot the server.

It’s so unreasonable!
Login this jail, the /lib that sybase can find only is in jail($jail/lib).
And the only glibc that sybase can address is the glibc-2.2.93 in $jail/lib.
It’s impossible for sybase to find glibc-2.5-24 of CentOS5 out of the jail.
Then, what’s wrong?

Try adding
It might be trying to open the pseudo terminal.

I have tried to mount devpts, it's no help yet.

Can you run
and maybe see what happens before the SEGFAULT?

I've succeeded.

I found the reason is "number of opened files". If it's great than 1024, the sybase server cannot be booted. To execute "$ ulimit -n 1024", it's ok.

Further more, I think if ulimit "number of opened files" to be great than 1024, it's possible to boot sybase, the point is what other kernel parametres must be adjusted together?

Thanks for David1357's help very much.