For installation instructions see the Section called Installing Glibc-2.3.2 in Chapter 6.
Glibc (2.3.2):
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/
Glibc-linuxthreads (2.3.2):
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/
Glibc Root/Perl Patch (2.3.1):
http://downloads.linuxfromscratch.org/
Glibc Libnss Patch (2.3.1):
http://downloads.linuxfromscratch.org/
(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)
Glibc is the C library that provides the system calls and basic functions such as open, malloc, printf, etc. The C library is used by all dynamically linked programs.
Glibc installs the following files:
catchsegv, gencat, getconf, getent, glibcbug, iconv, iconvconfig, ldconfig, ldd, lddlibc4, locale, localedef, mtrace, nscd, nscd_nischeck, pcprofiledump, pt_chown, rpcgen, rpcinfo, sln, sprof, tzselect, xtrace, zdump and zic
ld.so, libBrokenLocale.[a,so], libSegFault.so, libanl.[a,so], libbsd-compat.a, libc.[a,so], libc_nonshared.a, libcrypt.[a,so], libdl.[a,so], libg.a, libieee.a, libm.[a,so], libmcheck.a, libmemusage.so, libnsl.a, libnss_compat.so, libnss_dns.so, libnss_files.so, libnss_hesiod.so, libnss_nis.so, libnss_nisplus.so, libpcprofile.so, libpthread.[a,so], libresolv.[a,so], librpcsvc.a, librt.[a,so], libthread_db.so and libutil.[a,so]
(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)
catchsegv can be used to create a stack trace when a program terminates with a segmentation fault.
gencat generates message catalogues.
getconf displays the system configuration values for filesystem specific variables.
getent gets entries from an administrative database.
glibcbug creates a bug report about glibc and and mails it to the bug email address.
iconv performs character set conversion.
iconvconfig creates fastloading iconv module configuration file.
ldconfig configures the dynamic linker run time bindings.
ldd prints the shared libraries required by each program or shared library specified on the command line.
lddlibc4 assists ldd with object files.
locale is a Perl program which tells the compiler to enable (or disable) the use of POSIX locales for built-in operations.
localedef compiles locale specifications.
(No description available yet.)
nscd is a daemon that provides a cache for the most common name service requests.
nscd_nischeck checks whether or not secure mode is necessary for NIS+ lookup.
pcprofiledump dumps information generated by PC profiling.
pt_chown sets the owner, group and access permission of the slave pseudo terminal corresponding to the master pseudo terminal passed on file descriptor `3'. This is the helper program for the `grantpt' function. It is not intended to be run directly from the command line.
rpcgen generates C code to implement the RPC protocol.
rpcinfo makes an RPC call to an RPC server.
sln symbolically links dest to source. It is statically linked, needing no dynamic linking at all. Thus sln is useful to make symbolic links to dynamic libraries if the dynamic linking system for some reason is nonfunctional.
sprof reads and displays shared object profiling data.
tzselect asks the user for information about the current location and outputs the resulting time zone description to standard output.
xtrace traces execution of program by printing the currently executed function.
zdump is the time zone dumper.
zic is the time zone compiler.
ld.so is the helper program for shared library executables.
Used by software, such as Mozilla, to solve broken locales.
libSegFault is a segmentation fault signal handler. It tries to catch segfaults.
libanl is an asynchronous name lookup library.
libbsd-compat provides the portability needed in order to run certain programs in Linux.
These files constitute the main C library. The C library is a collection of commonly used functions in programs. This way a programmer doesn't need to create his own functions for every single task. The most common things like writing a string to the screen are already present and at the disposal of the programmer.
The C library (actually almost every library) comes in two flavors: a dynamic and a static one. In short, when a program uses a static C library, the code from the C library is copied into the executable file. When a program uses a dynamic library, the executable will not contain the code from the C library, but instead a routine that loads the functions from the library at the time the program is run. This means a significant decrease in the file size of a program. The documentation that comes with the C library describes this in more detail, as it is too complicated to explain here in one or two lines.
libcrypt is the cryptography library.
libdl is the dynamic linking interface library.
libg is a runtime library for g++.
libieee is the IEEE floating point library.
libm is the mathematical library.
libmcheck contains code run at boot.
libmemusage is used by memusage to help collect information about the memory usage of a program.
libnsl is the network services library.
The basic idea is to put the implementation of the different services offered to access the databases in separate modules. This has some advantages:
contributors can add new services without adding them to GNU C library,
the modules can be updated separately,
the C library image is smaller.
Code used by the kernel to track CPU time spent in functions, source code lines, and instructions.
The POSIX threads library.
Functions in this library provide for creating, sending, and interpreting packets to the Internet domain name servers.
Functions in this library provide miscellaneous RPC services.
Functions in this library provide most of the interfaces specified by the POSIX.1b Realtime Extension.
Functions is this library are useful for building debuggers for multi-threaded programs.
Contains code for "standard" functions used in many different Unix utilities.
(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)
Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib, readelf
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, cut, date, expr, hostname, install, ln,
mknod, mv, mkdir, rm, pwd, sort, touch, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Gzip: gzip
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo