Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- glibc, glibc-common, glibc-devel, glibc-headers, nscd
Issue
- A 3rd party application requires an older version of glibc than what's currently installed on the system.
- How to downgrade glibc
- How to remove glibc
Resolution
- Check for the required version by running:
# yum list --showduplicates glibc
- Downgrade the glibc package(s) to the previous version by running the following (if the requirement is a specific version, it would need to be appended to the package names below):
# yum downgrade glibc glibc-common glibc-devel glibc-headers nscd
Root Cause
- glibc is a library that provides core functionality that much of the system relies on. This particular package contains the most important sets of shared libraries: the standard C library and the standard math library. Without these two libraries, a Linux system will not function.
- While this can also be accomplished with RPM. Red Hat does not recommend manually removing glibc without a verified backup.