Hi,

I'm trying to get pcsc-lite working on an older 2.4 kernel(Mandrake 9.1) to support. Yes I know it's old but I have to use it, bear with me and please don't advise me to upgrade

Anyway, I tried to install one of the latest version of the pcsc-lite library, which is 1.4.102, and while doing a ./configure, it complains that my version of libusb is too old, and that I should upgrade to at least 0.1.7.

I'm wondering if there are any problems with installing a later version of libusb(either RPM or source) to an older 2.4 kernel?

Thanks.

"libusb" supports all kernels from 2.2 .
So it should be no problem to install "0.1.7"
or newer.

"rpm package" for 9.1 , probably not, but you
can get the source from
http://libusb.sourceforge.net/download.html

Regards

I also think it should work, as long as you use a recent enough version of both the 2.4 kernel and libusb.

Thanks. Where can I get libusb-devel source from also?

Also, rpm doesn't seem to detect that my libusb/libusb-devel are installed. It gives me the following error when I try to remove the package via "rpm -e <package>" :
When I do a "urpmi libusb" however, it tells me that everything has been installed. So what's the deal?

1) If you choose to compile and install from source,
you will get everything, all libs, all devel files.

2) Packages version 0.1.7 are here for mdk 9.X
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat....i586.rpm.html
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat....i586.rpm.html

You will have to try out yourself, if they are working in
your system.

Thanks!

OK, so I got the libusb/libusb-devel 0.1.7 rpm packages for 9.x(actually in the fine print it states that it's for 9.2 but I'm gonna assume it works for 9.1 as well).

However I'm having some problems updating my 0.1.6a to 0.1.7.

I first tried a rpm -ivh libusb0.1_4-devel-0.1.7-1mdk.i586.rpm but it gives me the following error:

I then tried to uninstall the old version with rpm -e libusb0.1_4-0.1.6a-2mdk but got the following error:

Then I tried the upgrade function of rpm with rpm -Uvh libusb0.1_4-devel-0.1.7-1mdk.i586.rpm but it gave this error

How exactly do I update the library? Should I use the --force, nodeps, replacepkgs, replacefiles options?

Thanks.

Tis' what people mean when they say "binary rpm dependency hell".

If you really need the newer version of libusb, then your best bet is to install it locally from source, either on your home or /usr/local. Use it only for development purposes, and leave your OS be happy with it's native version.

Problem is I don't know where to find the same version in source format.

So there's no way of updating these libraries? Seems like a pretty trivial task to be so difficult to perform.

On the libusb official repositories you should be able to find all the versions.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ackage_id=1632

About updating... Well, it depends. rpm might have some way to force the installation without caring about the dependencies. But if the dependency is *hard*, then all the programs linked against libusb on your system will stop working, or will work defectively, and that can cause all kind of problems.

By "hard dependency" I mean a dependency on a given API that's available on 0.6 and is not in 0.7. Or some major changes that will make it impossible for the program to adequately link against the new version. If the dependency is imposed by the rpm packages themselves then there shouldn't be any problem, but if the dependency is real then you definitely can't just take away 0.6 and substitute it with 0.7.

Besides that, if you are compiling pcsc, what's the problem with compiling one more package?

No problem. I just thought that an rpm that's specific to my distro would be better. Anyway, I managed to install the 0.1.7 package using urpmi instead...however pcsc-lite seems to have some problems detecting its existence.

Note that on binary distros you might need a separate -devel package with the headers, I don't know if that's the case here, but it might worth a check.

Yes I've actually downloaded and installed both the libusb and libusb-devel 0.1.7 packages for Mandrake 9.x. I think that should do it?

Weird thing is that when I did a urpmi libusb before I installed the 0.1.7, it said everything is installed. I had to do a urpmi libusb0.1_4-0.1.7-1mdk before it would install. In fact it prompted me that the existing version would need to be uninstalled before installation of 0.1.7 would proceed, and I agreed.

However, now when I do a urpmi libusb, it prompts me again that 0.1.7 needs to be uninstalled before installation would proceed. I suspect that urpmi libusb somehow assumes that the 0.1.6a is the one to be installed? Just a shot in the dark...

Usually yes. Though I don't use an rpm based distro.

Can't be sure but that seems to be the case. Maybe that could be solved by building your own rpm from an srpm (don't ask me how, rpm is not my cup of tea).

However that would only solve the dependency issues, and it doesn't explain why pcsc doesn't catch it. Maybe whatever rpm you are using has been packaged with different paths or something.

Thanks. Turns out that pcsclite doesn't support libusb 0.1.7 despite saying that it does. A mistake in the documentation. I was advised to install the latest libusb version instead, which is 0.1.12. Problem is, I can't uninstall the current libusb package with so many dependencies. Is it acceptable to simply install from the new 0.1.12 source?

It usually should be, but don't count on it. There might be leftovers that can interfere in lots of colorful ways in the future. The right way is to remove it using the scripts provided (uninstall.sh, make uninstall or whatever). You can as well reinstall it using make install, look at the file list on the output of make, and remove them all by hand). Then you can install the new version.

Maybe I didn't understand you well, but the dependencies shouldn't have nothing to do with that. At most, if some of them depends on libusb you might need to recompile them afterwards. But nothing else.