[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] The need for /lib64 - testing please

[Emmanuel Benisty]

On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Am 01.07.2011 06:48, schrieb Allan McRae:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I was looking at the /lib64 folder and wondering what it is really
>> needed for...  It just seems clutter to me on a pure x86_64 system (or
>> even with a multilib in lib32 folders like we have). As far as I can
>> tell, most things are perfectly fine without that folder and its two
>> symlinks.
>>
>> I would like some help testing removing this so I can get an idea of
>> what issues people run into.  There is bound to be some software that
>> makes assumptions about /lib64 in its installation and I would like to
>> know (a) how widespread that issue is and (b) how hard it is to work
>> around.
>>
>> If you want to try it out, just remove the /lib64 folder (after making
>> sure it only has symlinks to ld-2.13.so and ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 in it.
>> Run your system as usual for a while and report any issues you come across.
>
> First of all, /lib64/ld-2.14.so is unnecessary, only
> /lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so must exist.
>
> The problem is quite simple: The ELF binary hardcodes the path to the
> interpreter (which is the linker). Binaries that were compiled for other
> distributions or generic binaries distributed by third parties will have
> the path "/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2" hardcoded as their interpreter -
> I don't know where this convention comes from and why they didn't choose
> /lib (choosing /lib would be no problem, as the file names for the 32
> and 64 bit linkers differ, the former is ld-linux.so.2).

Just FTR, it most likely comes from
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#LIB64