Re: glibc: SA 12.3 085 / SA 12.4 079

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On 3/23/26 3:55 PM, Rainer Fiebig ([email protected] via lfs-support 
Mailing List) wrote:
> In SA 12.3 085 users are admonished to follow the full
> glibc-update-procedure detailed in LFS although only a patch within the
> same version was applied.  This seems a bit excessive to me - or is
> glibc really that touchy that one cannot even apply a security-patch
> without risking to ruin one's system?
> 
> SA 12.4 079 seems a bit more relaxed in this respect as it also provides
> a patch but doesn't mention the update-procedure.
> 
> So - who's right here?  And I'm also wondering - probably naively - why
> updating/upgrading glibc always has to be such a drama - after all they
> claim that "The GNU C Library is designed to be a backwards compatible,
> ..."[1].  Thanks.
> 
> Rainer
> 
> 
> [1] https://sourceware.org/glibc/
> 
> 

Hi Rainer,

Unfortunately the warning there is not excessive. If the update 
procedure is not followed, the system will get broken because 'make 
install' will crash and result in every program on the system returning 
a stack smashing error. This occurs because ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 isn't 
properly replaced because of the way the Makefile performs the installation.

The DESTDIR installation fixes the problem by installing the shared 
libraries first...

While glibc does advertise complete backwards compatibility, it will 
still fall over itself and break during the installation procedure if 
it's not followed carefully! However, after the procedure is followed, 
existing binaries don't break, so it is backwards compatible in that way :)

I noticed that SA-12.4-079 didn't have the warning, so when I filed the 
advisory for SA-13.0-021, I copied the warning over to SA-12.4-079.

-- 
- Doug

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