[techtalk] Large Disk/glibc/RPM Hell

[Kai MacTane]

Hi. I'm seeking a way out of RPM hell, and it looks like it involves some 
rather nasty installs from source. I'll try to describe the problem 
concisely, but it's a fairly big problem.

I have a Red Hat 6.1 box, on which I've been attempting to install an 80 GB 
IDE drive. As mentioned in the Large-Disk HOWTO, at 
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html#biosupgrades:

    The problem is that with the default 16 heads and 63 sectors/
    track this corresponds to a number of cylinders of more than
    65535, which does not fit into a short. Most BIOSes in existence
    today can't handle such disks. (See, e.g., Asus upgrades for new
    flash images that work.) Linux kernels older than 2.2.14 /
    2.3.21 need a patch. See IDE problems with 34+ GB disks below.

(The text "IDE problems with 34+ GB disks" is a hyperlink to more useful 
information.)

When I first got this disk, the machine in question was running 2.2.12-20 
(which came with the RH6.1 distro). I've since upgraded it to 2.4.1, with 
the kernel patches to handle large disks.

In addition, I've tried to upgrade various other modules and packages, in 
accordance with the kernel documentation. However, a couple of them have 
proved a bit intractable: util-linux and modutils. This is where the RPM 
hell comes in.

I'm running rpm 3.0.6-6x. To upgrade to util-linux-2.10o or modutils-2.4.0, 
I need to have glibc-2.2. My current version is 2.1.2-11. However, I can't 
upgrade glibc using rpm, because I need a higher version of rpm.

I tried installing rpm 4.0.2 from source, but it immediately barfed and 
told me I needed a higher glibc.

So now I'm wondering just how dangerous it would be to try to install glibc 
2.2.3 from source. The GNU glibc Web page does not make it sound at all 
easy, and points out that you can do irreparable damage to your system if 
you screw up.

FWIW, I do have experience installing from source -- I've done it with 
Apache, Perl, Qmail, Samba, BIND, and a few other things. But GNU makes 
this one sound like an *extremely* daunting task.

And really, I don't *care* what version of glibc I'm running. All i want is 
for my Linux machine to recognize its 80 GB IDE drive.

Is there any other way to do it? Is a source glibc install really as scary 
as GNU makes it sound? Is there anything else I should know, or any other 
advice anyone has? Thanks in advance for any pointers anyone can give me.

                                                 --Kai MacTane
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Playing dead and sweet submission,
  Cracks the whip deadpan on cue."
                                                 --Siouxsie and the
                                                   Banshees,
                                                  "Peek-a-boo"