installing a newer glibc
 

Hi,

I've determined that I need to install a newer version of glibc. But because it is the heart of many programs that dynamically link to it I'm a little worried about running an rpm to install it. But... I'd rather not compile it from source because I'm sure I will never get it running right.

I've noticed that QT has a number of symbolic links to different libs and I'm wondering if there is some way to do this w/ glibc. (a google search did not turn up anything useful.)

Or should I just run the rpm and keep my fingers crossed?

Thanks in advance for you input,
-Al

I've learned a few things along the way to installing a newer version of glibc but I still have some questions.

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For those newbies out there like me here's what I've learned so far (questions follow below):
1) For rpm based systems, if a package was installed by rpm you can:
rpm -q glibc
this will return the version of it
rpm -ql glibc
this will return every file that was installed with glibc rpm.
(Thanks to neo77777)

2) You can use mc to browse and extract individual files from an rpm. I needed to do this because I wanted to read the README and INSTALL files the package before I installed it. Just type mc, navigate to the rpm, then navigate to the file in the rpm you are interested in and copy it to your Desktop.
(Thanks to acid_kewpie)

3) The answer to my original question from the FAQ in the glibc package I want to install:
""Can I replace the libc on my Linux system with GNU libc?

{UD} You cannot replace any existing libc for Linux with GNU libc. It is binary incompatible and therefore has a different major version. You can, however, install it alongside your existing libc.""
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I was sure that I could not replace the libc I had on my system. But I need to install glibc 2.3 for a mysql program. I read the section "How should I avoid damaging my system when I install GNU libc?" in the FAQ and I now understand what the usr/local directories are for.

Here's my question:

How can make sure that when I run rpm that glibc is installed into usr/local? Is there a way to force this. I've looked at the rpm man page but I don't see anything like what i need.

Thanks for reading this long post,
-Al

If the package is built with relocation in mind you could try using --prefix in conjunction with --relocate, or try rebuild the src.rpm if any, with your path specs. I'm not sure this will be very usefull, and if you only need the libs/headers for one app, why not dump the rpm contents somewhere, search and replace libs/include stuff in the config/Makefile, build a static app and then ditch the whole 2.3?..