Glibc

For installation instructions see the Section called Installing Glibc-2.3.2 in Chapter 6.

Official Download Location

Glibc (2.3.2): 
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/

Glibc-linuxthreads (2.3.2): 
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/

Glibc Sscanf Patch (2.3.2-sscanf-1):
http://downloads.linuxfromscratch.org/

Contents of Glibc

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Glibc is the C library that provides the system calls and basic functions such as open, malloc, printf, etc. The C library is used by all dynamically linked programs.

Glibc installs the following files:

Program Files

catchsegv, gencat, getconf, getent, glibcbug, iconv, iconvconfig, ldconfig, ldd, lddlibc4, locale, localedef, mtrace, nscd, nscd_nischeck, pcprofiledump, pt_chown, rpcgen, rpcinfo, sln, sprof, tzselect, xtrace, zdump and zic

Library Files

ld.so, libBrokenLocale.[a,so], libSegFault.so, libanl.[a,so], libbsd-compat.a, libc.[a,so], libc_nonshared.a, libcrypt.[a,so], libdl.[a,so], libg.a, libieee.a, libm.[a,so], libmcheck.a, libmemusage.so, libnsl.a, libnss_compat.so, libnss_dns.so, libnss_files.so, libnss_hesiod.so, libnss_nis.so, libnss_nisplus.so, libpcprofile.so, libpthread.[a,so], libresolv.[a,so], librpcsvc.a, librt.[a,so], libthread_db.so and libutil.[a,so]

Descriptions

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Program file descriptions

catchsegv can be used to create a stack trace when a program terminates with a segmentation fault.

gencat generates message catalogues.

getconf displays the system configuration values for filesystem specific variables.

getent gets entries from an administrative database.

glibcbug creates a bug report and mails it to the bug email address.

iconv performs character set conversion.

iconvconfig creates fastloading iconv module configuration file.

ldconfig configures the dynamic linker runtime bindings.

ldd reports which shared libraries are required by each given program or shared library.

lddlibc4 assists ldd with object files.

locale is a Perl program that tells the compiler to enable or disable the use of POSIX locales for built-in operations.

localedef compiles locale specifications.

mtrace...

nscd is a name service cache daemon providing a cache for the most common name service requests.

nscd_nischeck checks whether or not secure mode is necessary for NIS+ lookup.

pcprofiledump dumps information generated by PC profiling.

pt_chown is a helper program for grantpt to set the owner, group and access permissions of a slave pseudo terminal.

rpcgen generates C code to implement the RPC protocol.

rpcinfo makes an RPC call to an RPC server.

sln is used to make symbolic links. The program is statically linked, so it is useful for making symbolic links to dynamic libraries if the dynamic linking system for some reason is nonfunctional.

sprof reads and displays shared object profiling data.

tzselect asks the user about the location of the system and reports the corresponding time zone description.

xtrace traces the execution of a program by printing the currently executed function.

zdump is the time zone dumper.

zic is the time zone compiler.

Library file descriptions

ld.so is the helper program for shared library executables.

libBrokenLocale is used by programs, such as Mozilla, to solve broken locales.

libSegFault is a segmentation fault signal handler. It tries to catch segfaults.

libanl is an asynchronous name lookup library.

libbsd-compat provides the portability needed in order to run certain BSD programs under Linux.

libc is the main C library -- a collection of commonly used functions.

libcrypt is the cryptography library.

libdl is the dynamic linking interface library.

libg is a runtime library for g++.

libieee is the IEEE floating point library.

libm is the mathematical library.

libmcheck contains code run at boot.

libmemusage is used by memusage to help collect information about the memory usage of a program.

libnsl is the network services library.

libnss* are the Name Service Switch libraries, containing functions for resolving host names, user names, group names, aliases, services, protocols,and the like.

libpcprofile contains profiling functions used to track the amount of CPU time spent in which source code lines.

libpthread is the POSIX threads library.

libresolv contains functions for creating, sending, and interpreting packets to the Internet domain name servers.

librpcsvccontains functions providing miscellaneous RPC services.

librt contains functions providing most of the interfaces specified by the POSIX.1b Realtime Extension.

libthread_db contains functions useful for building debuggers for multi-threaded programs.

libutil contains code for "standard" functions used in many different Unix utilities.

Glibc Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib, readelf
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, cut, date, expr, hostname, install, ln,
             mknod, mv, mkdir, rm, pwd, sort, touch, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Gzip: gzip
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo