#3841: Linux TBB should better detect wrong 32-bit vs 64-bit choice
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Reporter: arma | Owner: erinn
Type: defect | Status: new
Priority: normal | Milestone:
Component: Tor bundles/installation | Version:
Keywords: | Parent:
Points: | Actualpoints:
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Comment(by rransom):
Replying to [ticket:3841 arma]:
> I ran the 686 TBB (1.1.14-dev) on my 64-bit wheezy/sid, and got
> {{{
> arma at last-request:/tmp/tor-browser_en-US$ ./start-tor-browser
>
> Launching Tor Browser Bundle for Linux in /tmp/tor-browser_en-US
> ./App/vidalia: error while loading shared libraries: libXext.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
> Vidalia exited abnormally. Exit code: 127
> }}}
>
> It seems we should do some sort of detection if somebody has picked the
wrong arch, and tell them that rather than a cryptic lib failure?
The easy way to do this is to:
* ship two copies of a tiny C program, one compiled for IA-32 and the
other for AMD64, which simply `dlopen`s a shared library name specified on
the command line and returns an exit code indicating success or failure;
* ship a complete list of the libraries that each architecture's TBB
requires;
* in the launcher script, check whether the shared library test-loader
for its bundle's architecture can load its bundle's required libraries;
* if the required libraries are not available, check whether the shared
library test-loader for the other architecture can load (more of) that
architecture's required libraries, and if so, tell the user to try the
other TBB;
* otherwise, complain to the user that TBB needs some libraries
installed, and list them.
The even easier way to do this is to check the output of `uname -m`, but
that would do the wrong thing on a system with a 64-bit kernel and 32-bit
userland.
--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3841#comment:1>
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