(A note to RedHat/SULinux users from ITSS)

Linux users and administrators,

Please be aware that pubsw software is not supported on Red Hat 9 (including the most current versions of SULinux). Much of it may work, but much of it definitely does not work (particularly but not limited to any software built against X libraries), and we do not yet have an estimated date for when we will be able to support Red Hat 9.

Unfortunately, the lack of backward compatibility and the degree of change in Red Hat 9 is considerably worse than we had originally anticipated. We had originally thought that the only change we had to worry about was patching and rebuilding old packages with errno or resolver library problems (for which Red Hat 9) also has a workaround. We have since discovered that the glibc changes in Red Hat 9 have also broken the pubsw X libraries as well as various other shared libraries on which pubsw software relies. There is not one simple cause for the breakage; Red Hat appears to have made multiple changes to glibc that are not backward compatible with programs built with earlier versions.

These problems seem to be Red Hat-specific. Other Linux distributions may not be affected even if using the same version of glibc. Debian testing and unstable, for example, continue to run pubsw software without difficulties.

There is, as yet, no estimated time for Red Hat 9 support. The amount of work that needs to be done to support Red Hat 9 is fairly extensive, in some cases requires patching the original software (not just rebuilding it), and may require building a separate software tree solely for Red Hat 9. No resources have as yet been assigned to this work.

In the meantime, users of Red Hat 9 who need pubsw software will need to look for alternatives. Many packages in pubsw are also available as RPMs that can be installed locally, Red Hat 7.3 (or Red Hat 8) continue to work correctly with all pubsw software, or one could switch to a different Linux distribution with better backward compatibility.