Bug#896019: libglib2.0-0: undefined symbol g_date_copy breaking many programs

[Simon McVittie]

On Tue, 24 Apr 2018 at 01:33:02 -0400, rektide wrote:
> Hi sorry for the delay. Per request:
> 
> $ ls -il {,/usr}/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so*
> 42488866 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      23 Mar 22 05:08 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0 -> libglib-2.0.so.0.5600.0
>  3373718 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1107040 Oct  2  2014 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.4200.0
> 42488865 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1133872 Mar 22 05:08 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.5600.0
>  3429235 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      38 Mar 22 05:08 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
> 
> $ dpkg -S libglib-2.0.so
> libglib2.0-dev:amd64: /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.5600.0-gdb.py
> libglib2.0-dev:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so
> libglib2.0-0:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
> libglib2.0-0:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.5600.0
> 
> That is rather old. The laptop in question was built from a Debian/testing base
> using debootstrap in early 2016. That's over two years after the timestamp of
> libglib-2.0.so.0.4200.0 (October 2014).

Did you install stable in early 2016 and then upgrade to testing, or did
you debootstrap testing and continue from there?

In early 2016, stable was Debian 8 'jessie' (now oldstable) and testing was
Debian 9 'stretch' (now stable).

libglib-2.0.so.0.4200.0 with a timestamp of October 2 2014 looks like
it could have come from glib2.0 2.42.0-2, but jessie was released with
glib2.0 2.42.1-1 (uploaded November 2014), so I'm not sure how you
got 2.42.0-2?

Do you have any other libraries not owned by a package? You could find out
with:

    for x in {,/usr}/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/*; do dpkg -S "$x" >/dev/null; done

You'll get a message on stderr like "dpkg-query: no path found
matching pattern /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.4200.0"
for each library that is like that. A few libraries are not provided
directly by packages because they use the alternatives system (like
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libblas.so.3) but most shouldn't produce
any output.

> I got my laptop operational again by installing snapshots. I'm currently
> using http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20180401/ , which gives me
> libglib2.0-0 version 2.56.0-4. I've been hesitant to switch back to 2.56.1-2
> (still the candidate) but should give the experiment a go, to see if it works
> or not after this downgrade to this snapshot restored my system.

If you move /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.4200.0 out of the way
(for instance create a /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.4200.0/bug896019
directory and move it there) then the upgrade back to 2.56.1-2 should work.

    smcv