[Dxspider-support] problem with 1.43

[Dirk Koopman]

On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Steven Franke wrote:
> Dirk/Ian -
>
> Thanks for the responses. Using the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it
> philosophy", I am running SuSE version 5.3 here.
>
> The command:
> perl -e 'use DB_File; print "DB_File ver $DB_File::VERSION\n"'
> reports that I am using DB_file ver 1.72.
>
> Apparently, this is old - but I found the following under "Linux Notes" in
> the DB_File readme on CPAN:
>
> "Newer versions of Linux (e.g. RedHat 6) ship with a C library that has
> a version of Berkeley DB linked into it. This makes it very difficult to
> build DB_File with anything other than the version of Berkeley DB that
> shipped with your Linux release. If you do try to use a different
> version of Berkeley DB you will probably get the error described in the
> "Incompatible versions of db.h and libdb" section of this file."
>
> Apparently, this is the problem that you were referring to, Dirk? It is
> not clear to me whether this applies to my relatively old SuSE 5.3
> version. In any case, my understanding is that I should hold tight and
> wait for a new version of Spider that will not invoke the del_dup
> routine... Please correct me if I am wrong, and especially if I will need
> to move to a more recent distribution of Linux.
>

I know that I am an old whinger and I suppose I should have put a minimum 
version on it - but DB 1.72!!!!!! That is soooooooooooo old, that was 
obsolete in Linux 1.0.x days!!!

The DB Developers only admit that 1.85 (the 'standard' release) exists 
because so much software is out there that uses the API. Even that is buggy 
(which is why the modern Berkeley DB stuff looks like 1.85 but is actually 
2.2.xx or somesuch and much more reliable [now]).

It is going to get increasing difficult for me to keep up with the older 
releases of Linux as time goes on. It may be that there will be a time when I 
will have to insist on perl 5.005 and not just .004 (but we don't seem to be 
there yet). 

I personally think that for better or worse we are now stuck with GLIBC 2.1.x 
(and in some ways [esp small systems] it is worse) and I believe we should 
all consider upgrading to Redhat 6.2/Suse 6.4/Mandrake 7.x or whatever as 
some of the ax25 utils will probably no longer be maintained for older 
kernels and distributions. 

If CVS 1.44 works for you then do an export_user command on the console and 
you will find upgrading (should you be persuaded to do this) a LOT easier and 
you get to keep your current user file!

Dirk G1TLH