AppImage for CentOS 7.5

[TinoLange]

Hi.

Thanks a lot for NitroKey and also for the possibility to download it as AppImage.

I am working most of the time on a CentOS machine and I am not allowed to install other Repositories in /etc/yum.repos.d or install foreign RPM-Packages.

So I would like to use the AppImage, which comes in handy.
Unfortunately it requires newer libraries to run and will not start.
On CentOS 7.5 (which is the newest available version at that time) glibc 2.17 is the default.

Starting the AppImage yields:
nitrokey-app: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.18' not found (required by /tmp/.mount_NitrokWQO2H8/usr/optional/libstdc++/libstdc++.so.6)

Could you please build against a slightly older glibc to make it possible to use the NitroKey under CentOS / Fedora?

Thanks

Tino

[szszszsz]

Hi!

I think we would have to build the AppImage on CentOS then. Currently it is made on Ubuntu 14.04 AFAIR.
I am not sure this will be possible, as it might offer a too old compiler, without C++14 features.
Perhaps we could release Nitrokey App v0.6.3 as an AppImage, which does not require more than C++2003 standard.

But before that, could you tell what is your GCC version?

[TinoLange]

Hi szszszsz!

Thank you for looking at my request!

CentOS 7.5 comes with gcc-4.8.5 out of the box, this is really old - as nearly everything in the CentOS world ...

But I know that it is no problem having other compilers beside that. You can simply install them (via 3rdParty repo) or build crossenvs (crosstool-ng) to get newer compilers to choose from.

On work we have a development box (centOS 7.5) with gcc 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 available and choose which one to use with a simple shell script. So this is possible. Important is to bundle the libstdc++ (what you do in the AppImage) and to build against an old enough glibc.

Another solution without changing your development box might be to look what symbol exactly requires that new glibc and to see if one can program around that.

Cheers.

Tino

[TinoLange]

Note:
The dependency seems to come only from the packaged libstdc++.so - not from the program or its libs.

I just suceeded to start nitrokey-app, when doing

1. unpacking AppImage with ./Nitrokey.App.AppImage --appimage-extract

2. removing squashfs-root/usr/optional/libstdc++/libstdc++.so.6

3. adding a CentOS libstdc++.so.6 from a GCC 8.2.0 (x86_64-gcc-8.2.0-glibc-2.12.2, libstdc++.so.6.0.25) to squashfs-root/usr/lib/ instead

4. cd squashfs-root; ./AppRun

[TinoLange]

5. I was able to re-pack the patched AppImage (see above) with "https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage" again to a "new" AppImage that now runs even on my CentOS boxes. Cool :-)

Nevertheless, szszszsz - it would be really great if your provided AppImages would run on CentOS also without need to manually patch that.

Thanks

Tino