I am sitting here with an eeepc 701, the Xandros model. It's mostly good enough for my usage, so I'd rather not spend time installing something else, if it can be avoided. The problem I'm facing now, is that the latest flash player requires a newer glibc than the one that ships with the machine. As i'd really like the latest flash player, I am wondering if it's possible to (pick any): 1) Upgrade by hand (making a drop-in replacement to replace the old file) without breaking everything else made for the old glibc? 2) Install it separately in some other location, and make only the flash player use it? 3) Doctor the flash player binary with a hex-editor into thinking it needs just glibc 2.3 - I mean, whatever stuff would they need that isn't in 2,3 also??) Any thoughts?

I am not exactly the expert, but I have some years of Linux experience. I'd advice you against what you do plan. I have never user notebook before, much less Xandros. In linux, everything is compiled against
* kernel (linux)
* compiler (gcc)
* run-time library (glibc)

It would just break. Sometimes there are no hard-coded dependencies, the programs in most cases have to be re-compiled. In order for flash to use a specific libc, it has to be compiled that way. Since you don't have the source, you can't make it to; at least that is to my knowledge.

And, dude, do you really think developers don't know what their program requires? If they say they need the latest glibc, then they do require it. You don't know how many support tickets at my place of work we receive about users who didn't follow our instructions to the line...

I would advice you to perform an upgrade of your OS. Doesn't Xandros have any upgrades? If not, you might want to dig in; if the current version can't run flash, then there would be a lot of fuss on the forums (Xandros'). Somebody might have gotten to something.

As a last resource, you might want to try a different distro for your netbook. I have heard that there is a ubuntu-derivative that is built for asus eepc. I have read about Mandriva, as well. Just look it up.

I never was interested in netbooks, anyway. They don't offer the functionality I need.

Quote: Original post by dilyan_rusev

It would just break. Sometimes there are no hard-coded dependencies, the programs in most cases have to be re-compiled. In order for flash to use a specific libc, it has to be compiled that way. Since you don't have the source, you can't make it to; at least that is to my knowledge.

Isn't glibc supposed to be backwards compatible? Meaning, if I install 2.4 instead of 2.3, stuff should still work? If the new glibc is compiled on the Asus Eeepc SDK it should work, right?

Quote:
And, dude, do you really think developers don't know what their program requires? If they say they need the latest glibc, then they do require it. You don't know how many support tickets at my place of work we receive about users who didn't follow our instructions to the line...

No, I really don't think most binary packages actually would need features in glibc 2.4 if they had instead been compiled against 2.3. It's likely just a matter of if their build machine happened to contain an old or new distro. So, if it can be doctored into thinking 2.3 is enough, it probably would work.

Quote:
I would advice you to perform an upgrade of your OS. Doesn't Xandros have any upgrades? If not, you might want to dig in; if the current version can't run flash, then there would be a lot of fuss on the forums (Xandros'). Somebody might have gotten to something.

No, they don't have upgrades for the eeepc. The current version can only run flash 9, or a beta of 10 from last September (which is what I use... it mostly works, except on youtube). Most people there seem happy enough about this, and none of them actually seem to know what glibc even is, just that "the Xandros is too old".

Quote: Isn't glibc supposed to be backwards compatible?

It is. You should be able to replace glibc. But I think it's more trouble then it's worth. I've tried Xandros EEE a couple of times and I didn't like it much. I highly recommend replacing it with the EEE version of Ubuntu. It's far superior, more modern, has more software and runs better. And it even has a friendly Xandros-like non-Desktop interface if you want it.

I managed to get it working by doctoring the required version structures in the flash binary to want glibc 2.3 instead of glibc 2.4. Seems to be running along fine so far.

Thanks for the help anyways!

Where did you get a version of Flash 10 that needs a newer libc? I walked over to the support guys and asked them and they said Flash 10 for the 701 on the support site works fine (it's the released version, not the beta). They haven't heard of any problems with it on youtube.

From the sounds of it you downloaded flash for Ubuntu.

The only difference in the flash player from Adobe for Ubuntu is the symbol _stack_chk_fail. If you're using a glibc 2.3 and you get a stack check failure (eg. a buffer overflow exploit) you will die a slow and agonizing death. Otherwise what you did is good to go.

Quote: Original post by Bregma
Where did you get a version of Flash 10 that needs a newer libc? I walked over to the support guys and asked them and they said Flash 10 for the 701 on the support site works fine (it's the released version, not the beta). They haven't heard of any problems with it on youtube.

From the sounds of it you downloaded flash for Ubuntu.

The only difference in the flash player from Adobe for Ubuntu is the symbol _stack_chk_fail. If you're using a glibc 2.3 and you get a stack check failure (eg. a buffer overflow exploit) you will die a slow and agonizing death. Otherwise what you did is good to go.

Hi, thanks for your interest in this!

I got it by downloading the ".tar.gz for Linux" option from Adobe's website. It is version 10.0.22.87. There is a separate .deb file option to download for Ubuntu, but this is not it.

Firefox 2 on the EEEPC 701 wouldn't load the plugin unless i doctored it into thinking it only needs GLIBC 2.3 (It's still working well, by the way).

Other people using the 701 seem to be using a beta from last september, see this thread at eeeuser.com. The reason I couldn't use it was that all videos on Youtube displayed a "This video is no longer available" when using the beta.