prelink missing libelf.so.1

[gagern]

As reported in Gentoo bug 585106, dracut 044 has problems on Gentoo when prelinking:

dracut: *** Resolving executable dependencies ***
dracut: *** Resolving executable dependencies done***
dracut: *** Pre-linking files ***
/usr/sbin/prelink: error while loading shared libraries: libelf.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
dracut: *** Pre-linking files done ***
dracut: *** Stripping files ***
dracut: *** Stripping files done ***

The corresponding dracut code reads thus:

        dinfo "*** Pre-linking files ***"
        inst_multiple -o prelink /etc/prelink.conf /etc/prelink.conf.d/*.conf
        chroot "$initdir" "$PRELINK_BIN" -a
        rm -f -- "$initdir/$PRELINK_BIN"
        rm -fr -- "$initdir"/etc/prelink.*
        dinfo "*** Pre-linking files done ***"

So apparently it lists the files prelink will probably need, does the prelink step, then uninstalls said files again. But it misses the libelf reported by ldd:

# ldd /usr/sbin/prelink 
    linux-vdso.so.1 (…)
    libelf.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libelf.so.1 (…)
    libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (…)
    libz.so.1 => /lib64/libz.so.1 (…)
    /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (…)

I think dracut-install --ldd (or some shell function invoking this, e.g. DRACUT_RESOLVE_DEPS=1 inst_multiple) should be able to install the prelink binary with all accompanying files. But cleaning that up again might be tricky.

[tpgxyz]

Interesting why prelink support is still available in dracut, as it has been proven that prelink does more bad than good. (https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1183)

Btw, here is the patch that fixes that prelink
https://github.com/OpenMandrivaAssociation/dracut/blob/master/dracut-034-fix-prelink.patch

[haraldh]

@tpgxyz care to create a pull request with that patch?

[tpgxyz]

@haraldh done, please merge. Thanks

[Massimo-B]

Any news here?

[haraldh]

Hmm, thinking more about this. If ldd prelink reports libelf, the bug would be in dracut-install not installing the corresponding libelf.so.

Is this still an issue with dracut-046 ???
If yes, could you please point me to the stderr output of dracut started with --debug

[haraldh]

Those who can read have an advantage.

I think dracut-install --ldd (or some shell function invoking this, e.g. DRACUT_RESOLVE_DEPS=1 inst_multiple) should be able to install the prelink binary with all accompanying files. But cleaning that up again might be tricky.