relocation error in libgdk-1.2.so.0. Undefined symbol: g_source_add

big_manel · 01-29-2006, 08:59 PM

Hi
I'm having serious trouble. I had vector linux, with 2.4.28 kernell, running smoothly on a Pentium90. About a year ago I had to upgrade some core component/library (I don't remember if it was glib or gtk or gcc or something else) I was quite a noob back then and whenever something failed to compile I just followed and installed the missing dependencies. Anyway, I remember that I ended up having to manually symlink some libraries for whatever I was installing to work.

But then the real problems began: some X apps (I was running Xfree 3 with Icewm) would no longer launch correctly, yieldng a relocation error complaining about an undefined symbol (g_source_add) in libgdk-1.2.so.0. Abiword, dfm, xchat and many other apps got broken. Because this box was at the time mostly a server and X was very seldom used I didn't care about it, and eventually forgot what I had done to cause the problem.

Now I want the machine to be able to run some X apps; I deleted and reinstalled X (now Xfree 4.5.0) and gtk and glib (they were all under the X dir). Reinstalled IceWm but then, xchat still gives the same error! (xchat: relocation error: /usr/local/lib/libgdk-1.2.so.0: undefined symbol: g_source_add) I haven't tried to install Abiword but I guess it'll be the same. I have run ldconfig and checked that libgdk-1.2.so.0 (which is a symlink to libgdk-1.2.so.0.9.1) sees all its dependencies

Code:

ldd /usr/local/lib/lib

        libgmodule-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-1.2.so.0 (0x4003e000)
        libglib-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0 (0x40043000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x400c5000)
        libXext.so.6 => /lib/libXext.so.6 (0x400c8000)
        libX11.so.6 => /lib/libX11.so.6 (0x400d5000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40191000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x401b2000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)

What is wrong? I know I'm in deep trouble because googling for '"relocation error" "libgdk-1.2.so.0" "g_source_add"' yields only 3 results (!!) of people asking for help, and no answers. Please help!

Thankx

big_manel · 02-13-2006, 09:06 PM

Got it! It was really a hard one to figure... and it was entirely my fault:

I installed glib and gtk 2.0 about one year ago, and, probably because I did not RTFM, I was unhappy to see that the installation procedure did not remove the 1.2 libraries. Of course, they are meant to coexist. Also, glib-config --version kept returning the 1.2 version, which bugged me (again, classic RTFM problem).

I don't remember exactly which was the app I was trying to install, but it wasn't seeing the new libraries (I probably did not run ldconfig); so, I had this great idea! I changed the softlink in /usr/local/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0.0.10 (or whatever minor version it was at the time) to point to the 2.0 library! Now, wasn't I smart? And guess what, the app worked! Ha!

Of course I ended up breaking lots of X stuff (oddly, the failing apps only complained about the undefined g_source_add function and many others kept working fine; are the 2.0 and 1.2 versions that similar?) and because I had done it very late at night and was very sleepy I couldn't remember what I had done (duh!).

I got to the matter now because I tried to install gtk 2.0 (which I had meanwhile uninstalled) and the glib test prog complained:

Code:

'glib-config --version' returned 1.2.10, but GLIB (2.8.5) was found!

Again, no one on the entire net seemed to have a similar problem; only conflicts between different installs of 1.2 versions of glib.

I double-checked that the lib paths pointed to the 1.2 install and concluded that the only way the prog could be getting the 2.8.5 version number was because a 2.0 lib had gotten misplaced or misnamed. But because I had fresh installed glib 1.2 that could not be the case. The only alternative: a stray symlink...

Hope this helps anyone, although it does require some lack of brains to do what I did!

Bye!