libnsl.so.1missing since Fedora 28

[ogauthe]

Hi!

biber is not included in my texlive distribution so I downloaded the binary from https://ctan.org/tex-archive/biblio/biber/biber-linux. Unfortunately I cannot run it on Rocky Linux 8.9 as biber depends on libnsl.so.1, which is no more installed by default since Fedora 28.

The issue has already been mentioned at various places, but I could not find anything on github.
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/reproduce-devel/2022-10/msg00010.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/reproduce-devel/2019-08/msg00019.html
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/301126/how-to-install-vanilla-texlive-on-fedora

Many projects suffered from the same issue (searching for "missing libnsl.so.1" show how common it is), for instance it is discussed in
AppImageCommunity/pkg2appimage#336

For anyone having this issue on RHEL-based OS, a solution is to install locally libnsl.so.1, running sudo dnf install libnsl.

Concerning biber, I read that libnsl.so.1 is a legacy and that applications should use libnsl.so.2. Is there a plan to switch to libnsl.so.2?

[komascript]

libnsl.so.1 is also missing in standard installations of SuSE Tumbleweed. However it is still available from the main repository and can be installed using either YaST or

sudo zypper install libnsl1

But note, that libnsl1 does not have support for IPv6. So using libnsl3 would be recommended, because it libnsl3 has support for IPv6.

[plk]

This basically needs an upgrade of my linux 64 build machine. It's on Ubuntu 10.10 currently to be as backwards compatible as possible. Every few years it needs an upgrade ...

[kir0ul]

libnsl.so.1 is also missing in standard installations of SuSE Tumbleweed. However it is still available from the main repository and can be installed using either YaST or

sudo zypper install libnsl1

But note, that libnsl1 does not have support for IPv6. So using libnsl3 would be recommended, because it libnsl3 has support for IPv6.

Thanks @komascript, I had the same issue on Tumbleweed 🙏

[plk]

Can you try the DEV version 2.20 for x86_64 linux? It's now compiled on 16.04LTS which should be a bit better.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/biblatex-biber/development/binaries/Linux/biber-linux_x86_64.tar.gz/download

[komascript]

With SuSE Tumbleweed this one works without error (one biber --version tested, but should be enough for the libnsl.so.1 issue). Thank you.

BTW: I don't know which libnsl version is part of SuSE Leap 15.4, 15.5, 15.6, because dedicated libnsl packages are only available with Tumbleweed and Slowroll. The Leaps seem to have the lib hidden in another package and currently I do not have any Leap version installed.

[ogauthe]

I confirm I can execute biber version: 2.20 (beta). When I try to use it in a project I run into compatibilities issues with my biblatex but this is unrelated. Thanks for the fix!

[wierdlmate]

With the latest, updated texlive on my Fedora 39 system, when I run this new devel version of biber I get the error

Running Biber' on series_review' with ``biber series_review''
INFO - This is Biber 2.20 (beta)
INFO - Logfile is 'series_review.blg'
INFO - Reading 'series_review.bcf'
ERROR - Error: Found biblatex control file version 3.10, expected version 3.11.
This means that your biber (2.20) and biblatex (3.19) versions are incompatible.
See compat matrix in biblatex or biber PDF documentation.
INFO - ERRORS: 1

TeX Output exited abnormally with code 2 at Thu Mar 7 06:16:07

Is there a version of the biber executable that would work on both Fedora 39 and the newest (2023) texlive out of the box (I understand the workarounds you gave above).

[plk]

Not really, you need the corresponding biblatex version which for biber 2.20 is biblatex 3.20 dev version which you can get from Sourceforge.