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I'm continually getting this error:

/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.14' not found

What I did before was add the Debian experimental repo and update to 2.17. But through a long chain of events, this ended up breaking almost everything on my system, and I had to reinstall. Is there any way to upgrade just this single package, without screwing up apt?

tkbx
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  • Which version do you have installed? – terdon Sep 25 '13 at 23:46
  • @terdon Crunchbang 11, which is Debian 7 – tkbx Sep 26 '13 at 00:30
  • I mean which version of libc. It looks like something is searching for 2.14, which one do you have installed? You said you reinstalled so I assume you're not still on 2.17. – terdon Sep 26 '13 at 00:38
  • IMO your best option would be to just switch to debian jessie aka testing, and `apt-get install openbox` (and related packages) to keep the same openbox-based UI. or use xfce. or maybe lxde. – cas Sep 26 '13 at 02:37
  • If I understand the question correctly, the issue is that you want to install a package from experimental, and this depends on more recent versions of core packages like the C library (`libc6`). The incorrect thing to do it to install a more recent versions of those core package, like the C library. The correct thing to do is to rebuild the package on your system, against the versions of the build dependencies that your system uses, if possible. In some cases this is not so easy, but this really depends on the situation. – Faheem Mitha Sep 26 '13 at 09:35
  • Note that I am inferring this from the question, which is poorly written and unclear (sorry). It is possible the questioner really just wants to upgrade libc6 for some other reason, but that seems unlikely. – Faheem Mitha Sep 26 '13 at 09:38
  • @FaheemMitha most of the programs giving me the error about outdated glibc are closed-source – tkbx Sep 26 '13 at 12:33
  • @tkbx: Ok, I see. In that case, I withdraw my comments above. Sorry about that. – Faheem Mitha Sep 26 '13 at 13:07

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Upgrading a single package is often not a problem. Upgrading libc will be. There are simply too many other packages that depend on it:

$ apt-cache rdepends libc6 |wc
16057

That means that 16057 other packages will depend on libc6 and some of them are bound to have problems with the new version. That's one of the main benefits of a packaging system.

So, you don't want to upgrade that without upgrading the rest of your system. What you could do is create a chroot environment and install a minimal distribution there. For details on how to do that, have a look at @Gilles's answers here:

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