binutils: -z defs ld flag breaks gnome-settings-daemon on IA-64

[Émeric Maschino]

Hi,

> -z defs means to disallow undefined symbols in object files.  Are you
> sure that there is not some undefined symbol in an object file and
> this is not build system/runtime behavior fallout from that?

I know nothing about gnome-settings-daemon code and related software,
so can't make any assumption on potential undefined symbol.

>> By the way, with currently broken gnome-settings-daemon-2.30.2-2 and
>> gdm3 window manager, CPU power is completely eaten by running
>> instances of gnome-settings-daemon. Even worse, each time a user logs
>> in/off, additional gnome-settings-daemon processes are forked, leading
>> to a completely unusable system.
>
> These are symptoms and do not in themselves sound like something a
> linker would do.  It would be very nice if someone could track down
> the underlying problem.

Sorry if I was unclear.

These symptoms only surface with broken gnome-settings-daemon binary.
Simply removing the offending -z defs flag from LDFLAGS of the
debian/rules build script of the gnome-settings-daemon source package
produces a working binary, making these symptoms disappear.

> Thanks for writing,

Thanks for answering :-)

> Jonathan

Émeric