Conference turris::digital_unix

I work for the Software Partner Engineering group in the UK.

I have provided support for Smallworld during their Digital UNIX v4
binary qualification. I QAR'd the problem on Smallworld's behalf which
resulted in patch OSF400-119 being needed.

Thus I am an interested party in this problem.

  John Wood @REO

Smallworld have asked me to write a note for distribution to their agents
re. this problem. Here it is.

  John
--------

There is a known problem with Digital UNIX v4.0 which can cause the Smallworld
Smallworld GIS application to crash intermittently. This problem requires a
patch to the libc.so and libc.a libraries. This patch has reference
identifier OSF400-119. At the time of writing, this patch isn't officially
available from Digital Customer Support Centres. 

As a temporary measure, please ask your local Digital contact to contact
[email protected] for the latest status of the patch. Currently
patched copies of libc are available from the internal-to-Digital ftp location
16.31.96.56 in the pub directory; John Wood can provide instructions for
applying the patch.

The fix will be included in the next "dot" release of Digital UNIX (-probably 
v4.2). It is not fixed in any variant of Digital UNIX v4.0 (i.e. v4.0A, v4.0B,
etc.). Digital apologises for any inconvenience.

Hello John ..

We have customers here in Denmark asking for the SmallWorld 400-119 , libc.* 
patch.

It seems that the update documentation (last reply) has not reached them.

Is there any news on this subject ???

Has the patch been tested / qualified ??

Thanks in advance for an answer.

Regards MArtin 857-3611

[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

I replied to -.1 by e-mail.

Below is a note on the official patch kits. There are two ongoing issues:
- the patch kits are not yet available via Internet externally to Digital
- the patch kit install does not allow you to apply these official patches
  to a system which has one of the temporary test patches already installed.

  John Wood
-------------


	Smallworld GIS on Digital UNIX v4.0 - libc patch
	================================================

In order for Smallworld GIS v2.1 and v2.2 to run on Digital UNIX v4.0, v4.0A
and v4.0B, a patch to Digital UNIX is required. This patch has reference
identification of OSF400-119. This patch is now officially available from
Digital and is packaged as part of a kit containing many patches. The patch
provides a new version of the C run-time library files /shlib/libc.so and
/usr/ccs/lib/libc.a. This note is a guideline to the patches from the
perspective of getting Smallworld running.


Patch Kits
==========

The patch kits for the different versions of Digital UNIX are:


Digital UNIX version	Patch kit			Size
--------------------	---------			----

v4.0   (v4.0 386)		DUV40AS00001-19970303.tar	25538560 bytes

v4.0A  (v4.0 464)		DUV40AAS00001-19970313.tar	22179840 bytes

v4.0B  (v4.0 564)		DUV40BAS00002-19970227.tar	17111040 bytes


Note how the patch-kit names include the date when the patch kit was produced,
hence the patch kit names might change if they are superceeded.

The patch-kits and read-me documentation are available from the internal-to-
Digital world-wide-web URL of:

	http://www.zk3.dec.com/dupatchwww/v40pats.html



Installing the patch
=====================

(Any commands shown below are for illustrative purposes only. Users should
refer to the official documentation which comes with the patch kits).

First the tar-file patch-kit has to be unloaded, e.g.

	# tar xvf DUV40AS00001-19970303.tar
	
This then creates a directory "patch_kit" which contains two sub-directories
"doc" and "kit" and a script "dupatch".

Ypu need to be in single-user mode to be able to install the patch, e.g.

	# shutdown now
	# /sbin/bcheckrc		(probably needed to mount filesystems)
	
Then run the "dupatch" script, e.g. (substitute "PATH" as appropriate):

	# /PATH/patch_kit/dupatch
	
and select the following menu options:

    Main Menu
	1) Patch Installation

    Patch Installation Menu
    	2) Check & Install
    	

A list of 50 or so patches is then displayed. The list below shows which patch 
option to install depending upon your operating system version:

 Digital UNIX v4.0:
    Library Patches:
     37)  V4.0 Patch 0154.00 - Library Corrections, Security (SSRT0425U)

 Digital UNIX v4.0A:
    Library Patches:
     32)  V4.0A Patch 0126.00 - Library Patches, Security (SSRT0425U)

 Digital UNIX v4.0B:
    Security Related Patches:
     33)	V4.0B Patch 0047.00 - libc Corrections, Security (SSRT0425U)
	 

Some of the patches will also apply a mandatory patch which may require you
to subsequently rebuild the kernel. E.g.

	# doconfig -c <NODENAME>
	# mv /vmunix /vmunix.pre_patch
	# mv /sys/<NODENAME>/vmunix /vmunix
	# reboot
	

libc identification
===================

To help identify whether the patch has been applied to a system, below is a
table of the different libc versions, which you could check against the
/shlib/libc.so and /usr/ccs/lib/libc.a on your system. The file name indicates
whether the file is the original or a patched one.

    checksum     file                        bytes   date
    --------     ----                        -----   ----
    
    58299   1951 libc.a_v40_orig             1997298 May 20  1996 
    09764   1952 libc.a_v40_patch-19970303   1998066 Feb 26 14:09
    20750   1951 libc.a_v40a_orig            1997128 Aug 20  1996 
    37982   1952 libc.a_v40a_patch-19970313  1998020 Feb 27 02:25 
    10799   1952 libc.a_v40b_orig            1998188 Nov 22 21:43 
    52325   1952 libc.a_v40b_patch-19970227  1998624 Feb 26 00:56 
    
    01206   1542 libc.so_v40_orig            1578240 May 20  1996 
    08062   1542 libc.so_v40_patch-19970303  1578960 Feb 26 14:41 
    40026   1542 libc.so_v40a_orig           1578112 Aug 20  1996 
    08065   1542 libc.so_v40a_patch-19970313 1578960 Feb 27 02:57 
    33067   1542 libc.so_v40b_orig           1578192 Nov 16 02:09 
    55556   1542 libc.so_v40b_patch-19970227 1578896 Feb 26 01:24 

Note that on Digital UNIX v4.* that /shlib/libc_r.so is a symbolic link to
/shlib/libc.so; likewise for /usr/ccs/lib/libc_r.a to /usr/ccs/lib/libc.a.
Thus the libc_r.* libraries are updated as well.

>Note that on Digital UNIX v4.* that /shlib/libc_r.so is a symbolic link to
>/shlib/libc.so;

Bzzt. /shlib/libc_r.so is a _hard_ link to /shlib/libc.so.   Be careful,
you can cause yourself many obscure problems if you don't pay attention
to this.