[syslog-ng] syslog-ng 3.2.1 compile error

[Pal Tamas]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 06:25:41PM -0800, Lutz Mutz wrote:
> Hey everyone,
> 
> I'm trying to compile syslog-ng 3.2.1 on CentOS 5.3 which is running glib
> 2.12.3-4, and get this error:
> 
> ./.libs/libdbparser.so: undefined reference to `g_timeout_add_seconds'
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> make[5]: *** [pdbtool] Error 1
> make[5]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/syslog-ng-3.2.1/modules/dbparser'
> make[4]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> make[4]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/syslog-ng-3.2.1/modules/dbparser'
> make[3]: *** [all] Error 2
> make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/syslog-ng-3.2.1/modules/dbparser'
> make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/syslog-ng-3.2.1/modules'
> make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/syslog-ng-3.2.1'
> make: *** [all] Error 2
> 
> 
> As I understand g_timeout_add_seconds was added to glib 2.14, which CentOS
> doesn't support yet. Now my question is, there was a big filed a while ago
> about this, does balabit plan on implementing the old api for glib to support
> 3.2.1 for glib < 2.14 ? Knowing the fact that CentOS is such a popular and wide
> distribution, why not make it easy for us and patch it?
> Is my other choice to just compile it statically on a system running glib >=
> 2.14 and then install the binary on the CentOS system?
> 
> Thanks,
> Lutz
Hello,

Using the older API is Bazsi's decision, but I have doubts about it's
feasibility.  My recommendation is building a GLIB 2.14 and installing
it to an alternative directory and link to it(see below). If it doesn't
work, I recommend trying the pre-compiled OSE installers built by
BalaBit, which bring all their dependencies with them. You can download
them from
http://www.balabit.com/downloads/files?path=/syslog-ng/sources/3.2.1/setups

Building your own binaries:
---------------------------
I don't recommend building a statically linked syslog-ng on different
(not CentOS machine I presume) machine. Depending the differences
between the distributions, you can get a binary that won't even run on
CentOS 5.3 because it too needs a newer version of glibc (missing
GLIBC_2.X.X symbols error) and/or other dependencies which won't be
linked statically but both distributions have incompatible incompatible
versions of them(openssl as a prime suspect).

I recommend you to compile and install glib 2.14 to an alternative
location(but not under /usr/local/lib or any other path listed in
ld.so's configuration /etc/ld.so.conf) on the CentOS machine and either
link to it statically or use rpath to force the dynamic linker to look
for the dependencies in the said path first.

To compile with the alternative glib, add
'/path/to/glib214/lib/pkgconfig' to the beginning of PKG_CONFIG_PATH.

If the alternative directory contains other dependencies which are not
managed by pkg-config(1)*, then add the following to CFLAGS variable:
-I</path/to/glib214>/include 
and this to LDFLAGS:
-L</path/to/glib214>/lib

If you want to use -rpath, say to distribute the compiled binary and
it's dependencies to other machines, add '-Wl,-R,/path/to/glib214/lib'
to LDFLAGS.

Also prepend PATH with /path/to/glib214/bin and LD_LIBRARY_PATH with
/path/to/glib214/bin, then run ./configure and build syslog-ng.

I don't recommend exporting LDFLAGS and CFLAGS, you better off
specifying them on the command line to ./configure:
CFLAGS="-I/path/to/glib214/include <other CFLAGS opts>" \
LDFLAGS="-L/path/to/glib214/lib <other linker opts>" \
./configure ...

You can do that with the other needed environment variables (PATH,
LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH) too.

* the libiconv and gettext libraries on the system might be too old for
  GLIB 2.14, probably you need to build a custom version of them too.
  Luckily they don't have dependencies except each other. Adding
  -I<path> and -L<path> to their LDFLAGS and CFLAGS will do the trick
  along with adding 
  '--without-libiconv-prefix --without-libintl-prefix'
  to libiconv's ./configure and 
  '--with-libiconv-prefix=<path> --with-libintl-prefix=<path>' 
  to gettext's ./configure.

-- 
Pal Tamas/Folti
folti at balabit.hu