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Hi All,

Those who are trying to update their boxes, may have struck problems building the latest versions of glibc. It appears, a bug in the binutils package, is causing the following error message to be spat out, and thus causes portage to bomb out:

/var/tmp/portage/glibc-2.3.4.20050125-r1/temp/ccyZTFe5.s: Assembler messages:
/var/tmp/portage/glibc-2.3.4.20050125-r1/temp/ccyZTFe5.s:131: Error: operation combines symbols in different segments

The build usually falls apart from there. This problem affects both 2.3.4 and 2.3.5. Currently, progress on building 2005.1 stages is halted due to this issue.

At the moment, I’m trialling binutils-2.16.1 (as opposed to 2.x.9x.x.x series, which have known issues), and there are plans to potentially mark it stable on mips. glibc-2.3.5 is a definate candidate for a bump to stable.

So, for those who have hit this problem… try upgrading using the following commands:

# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~mips" emerge =binutils-2.16.1
# source /etc/profile
# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~mips" emerge =glibc-2.3.5

If you’re paranoid, do the following, first, before attempting an upgrade:

# quickpkg /var/db/pkg/sys-libs/glibc* /var/db/pkg/sys-devel/binutils*

then store the resulting packages somewhere handy, as you’ll need them if you have to recover your system.

We hope to have the situation rectified in the very near future.

Regards,
Stuart Longland.

Hi All,

For those wondering where the 2005.1 Cobalt stages are, read on.

I have just started updating my Qube’s portage tree. Once that is done, I’ll start making a seed stage (a crude stage 3 image) before the build commences in earnest.

As with last time, I’ll upload the binary packages during the stage3 build phase as they are compiled, these will go into my devspace.

Please note, the changes to CoLo with respect to menus. This release will have the newer CoLo loader, and the syntax has changed slightly. See my previous post on the topic for details… I’ll be updating the documentation as soon as I have arcload nutted out.

I’ll keep you posted.