[Nix-dev] tar mkdir function not implemented

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Thu, Nov 03, 2011 at 02:39:11PM -0600, quick at sparq.org wrote:
> Quoting Eelco Dolstra <e.dolstra at tudelft.nl>:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On 11/03/2011 04:14 PM, quick at sparq.org wrote:
> > 
> > > building /nix/store/0jmzlnayh2p06vlgmiiyaj3xppc6l9lr-zlib-1.2.5
> > > unpacking sources
> > > unpacking source archive /nix/store/hadgw0cdg8f8dlnd47lqk15rdpwfdwnx-
> > > zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz
> > > zlib-1.2.5/
> > > tar: zlib-1.2.5: Cannot mkdir: Function not implemented
> > 
> > This wouldn't happen to be on some kind of Red Hat / Centos system, right? 
> > I
> > seem to remember that they made some incompatible kernel changes in some
> > versions that caused incompatibilities with vanilla Glibc.
> 
> Embarassingly, yes.  I'm stuck with a RHEL3 system and was hoping to be able to 
> use nix to "overlay" a nice, recent set of tools/libraries onto that ancient 
> base to enable some needed functionality.
> 
> Anyone been down this path before?  I feel like it's close to working...
> 
> Maybe there's even a "--system-filter rhel" or something similar?  :-)

It's a matter of having the good package for linuxHeaders in nixpkgs, and good
bootstrap-tools. I think old bootstrap-tools can't bootstrap a new stdenv
easily. And for the linuxHeaders it's about changing a tarball.

Can a normal recent linux kernel run code for that RHEL3 kernel? If so, maybe we
could generate some new bootstraptools with old kernel headers.