Re: outdated arm-linux-gnueabi compiler requirement

On 14/02/2014 6:25 AM, Pierre St-Germain wrote:
> I think I made more progress...think it's more glibc problem:
>
> On the Platform of the device:
> /mnt/rwfs # /lib/libc.so.6
> GNU C Library stable release version 2.3.5, by Roland McGrath et al.

glibc 2.3.5 is pre Debian 4.0 Etch (Sarge (3.1) or thereabouts). That's 
beyond ancient.

I had problems like this when hacking around with an old Netgear 
ReadyNAS Duo.  It was even weirder than your ARM device, as it was 
32-bit SPARC, and had a modified 2.6.17 kernel that required gcc 3.3 to 
build.  See http://wiki.dietpc.org/wiki/DIET-PC_on_SPARC_ReadyNAS if 
curious.

For that project, I ended up having to install Debian Sarge (SPARC, in 
my case) on an emulated QEMU virtual machine from the repo at 
http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/, and use that to compile 
stuff.  If you intend to augment the existing userspace on this device 
with newly compiled programs, you'll have probably to do something 
similar.  The Emdebian project will be of no use to you at all, because 
even the earliest discontinued versions of Emdebian Grip/Crush are more 
recent than Sarge!

It might theoretically be possible to replace your entire userspace with 
Emdebian Wheezy-Grip ARMEL and marry it up to the 2.6.27 kernel you 
presumably have no choice but to use, but as that kernel version is well 
shy of the version that is intended to accompany Wheezy (3.2) nobody is 
going to be interested in helping you do it!  I expect that even if you 
miraculously got it to work, a lot of userspace functionality would be 
broken due to reliance on kernel system calls that don't exist in 
2.6.27.  Personally, I think that the best that you could hope for is a 
Debian variant somewhere around the Lenny (5.0) level.