[Nix-dev] Re: Problem installing vim-7.2-huge-X11-python-tcl.drv

[Peter Simons]

Michael Raskin writes:

 >> touch: setting times of `src/auto/link.sed': Function not implemented
 >
 > What is your exact kernel version? peti on IRC has mentioned that he
 > has some patches for glibc on RHEL kernel that he has applied, but
 > hasn't yet prepared for submitting (even as option). Maybe that could
 > help you. Also read the "gcc broken for FORTRAN build" thread
 > (2008-08-05 .. 2008-08-08) in nix-dev archives.

The problem appears to be that current glibc and coreutils configure
themselves with support for nanosecond-resolution timestamps enabled.
The kernel, however, doesn't actually support for that feature -- the
corresponding functions simply return ENOSYS errors. That is the error
message Jeevakan has been seeing above. Technically, coreutils should
recognize that error and fall back to the ordinary function calls, but
alas, they don't. This problem is remedied by the patch Pjotr posted in
the thread mentioned above. Another "solution" is to downgrade both
packages to a version that is unaware of nanosecond timestamps, i.e.
glibc 2.5 and coreutils 6.11. That is what I did (because my RHEL kernel
triggers other, even funkier errors in glibc 2.7), and my installation
works fine now. In current nixpkgs, glibc 2.5 doesn't seem to build on
x86, though, it compiles only on x86_64.

The entire situation is a bit of a mess.

Take care,
Peter