My glibc problem...

[Tim Wunder]

Some of you may remember that my updating glibc to 2.2.4, then 2.2.5, on 
my Caldera eWorkstation 3.1 system has caused me a little grief. Most 
centering around an error involving an undefined reference to atexit 
when compiling and/or configuring source code.

Well, while reading up on WTF glibc-2.2.93 was, I ran accross these 
little nuggets in the current glibc FAQ:

<quote>
3.23. I get "undefined reference to `atexit'"
{UD} This means that your installation is somehow broken. The situation 
is the same as for 'stat', 'fstat', etc (see question 2.7). Investigate 
why the linker does not pick up libc_nonshared.a.

If a similar message is issued at runtime this means that the 
application or DSO is not linked against libc. This can cause problems 
since 'atexit' is not exported anymore.

2.7. Looking through the shared libc file I haven't found the functions 
`stat', `lstat', `fstat', and `mknod' and while linking on my Linux 
system I get error messages. How is this supposed to work?
{RM} Believe it or not, stat and lstat (and fstat, and mknod) are 
supposed to be undefined references in libc.so.6! Your problem is 
probably a missing or incorrect /usr/lib/libc.so file; note that this is 
a small text file now, not a symlink to libc.so.6. It should look 
something like this:

GROUP ( libc.so.6 libc_nonshared.a )
</quote>

Interestingly, my /usr/lib/libc.so file is as such:
$ cat /usr/lib/libc.so
/* GNU ld script
  Use the shared library, but some functions are only in
  the static library, so try that secondarily.  */
GROUP ( /lib/libc.so.6 /usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a )

So that looks right, both /lib/libc.so.6 and /usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a 
exist and they both appear to be version 2.2.5 files (based on the file 
creation dates).

Based on the FAQ's answer of "Investigate why the linker does not pick 
up libc_nonshared.a...", I'm thinking now that binutils may be the 
problem. Anyone know of any other reason that the linker wouldn't be 
picking up libc_nonshared.a? Anyone recommend what version of binutils 
to try?

Regards,
Tim