On Sunday 07 January 2007 11:19, chrism at imntv.com
wrote:> Just curious about why you'd choose to do that rather than upgrade to
> the latest 3.x or 4.x release. Do you have some canned binaries that
> won't run on a more recent vintage system even with the compatibility
libs?
FWIW, I have a few canned binaries in use at one site that require two really
archaic libs. One is (wait for it) libc5-based. Yes, libc-5.3.12, last
libc5 on RH. Latest libc5 compat was distributed with RHL6.2. The other is
linked against glibc 2.0; it is multithreaded and does not work with glibc
2.2 (we have tried; it doesn't work) but it will work with glibc 2.1.
The first app was originally released for Red Hat Linux 4.x (not RHEL4; we
have come full circle on versions, no?), and the second was released for RHL
5. The CentOS 2.1 VM (VMware server is great for running legacy stuff on
modern hardware that isn't supportable by the old OS) replaces the really
old
RHL 4.2 PentiumPro 200 server and the old but not quite so old Mandrake 5.3
K6-2 500 server (back when Mandrake was RHL+KDE in effect).
It is a case of 'the app works and we ain't paying for an upgrade we
don't
need when the app cost x thousand dollars!' Can't blame them at all;
the app
does work and works well, both pieces. Has for nearly ten years now, with
very little downtime. Serves the need (it's a fairly specialized broadcast
radio application written on AOLserver 2.x and tied to some odd backend
stuff).
But have you tried installing RHL 4.2 lately on anything more modern than a
Pentium II? Or RHL 5.2 (Mandrake 5.3) on anything more modern than a P3?
VMware server solves the problem very nicely.
--
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC 28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu