How to revert to older version of libc6 in Ubuntu?

I installed valgrind which replaced libc6 on my Ubuntu 12.04 system with a sligthly different version, which broke an application on my system. Can I somehow revert to the Ubuntu 5.1 version? If so, where can I find it?

Preparing to replace libc6-dev 2.13-20ubuntu5.1 (using .../libc6-dev_2.13-20ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libc6-dev ...
Preparing to replace libc-dev-bin 2.13-20ubuntu5.1 (using .../libc-dev-bin_2.13-20ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libc-dev-bin ...
Preparing to replace libc-bin 2.13-20ubuntu5.1 (using .../libc-bin_2.13-20ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libc-bin ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up libc-bin (2.13-20ubuntu5.3) ...
(Reading database ... 192982 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libc6 2.13-20ubuntu5.1 (using .../libc6_2.13-20ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libc6 ...
Setting up libc6 (2.13-20ubuntu5.3) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
/sbin/ldconfig.real: /usr/local/lib/liblzma.so.5 is not a symbolic link

Selecting previously deselected package libc6-dbg.
(Reading database ... 192982 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libc6-dbg (from .../libc6-dbg_2.13-20ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package valgrind.
Unpacking valgrind (from .../valgrind_1%3a3.6.1-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up libc-dev-bin (2.13-20ubuntu5.3) ...
Setting up libc6-dev (2.13-20ubuntu5.3) ...
Setting up libc6-dbg (2.13-20ubuntu5.3) ...
Setting up valgrind (1:3.6.1-0ubuntu3) ...

hlitz

Posted 2013-02-26T00:59:00.073

Reputation: 153

Answers

The biggest problem is likely going to be to find the exact version that you had installed before as a .deb, especially if you did apt-get autoclean in between.

In general to install a particular version you would do

sudo apt-get install libc6=2.13-20ubuntu5.1

then you could mark the package as held using:

echo "libc6 hold"|sudo dpkg --set-selections

so that subsequent updates don't update it automatically. Problem for you would be to find a mirror that has the old version and use that or find the .deb for the old version and use dpkg -i ... to install it manually.

Try locate libc6_2.13-20ubuntu5.1_amd64.deb to see whether you have a cached copy.

However, what are the symptoms of the failing program? It's possible there are solutions to the problem other than reverting to an older version of libc6.

0xC0000022L

Posted 2013-02-26T00:59:00.073

Reputation: 5 091

I found the exact packages on google and had to resolve some dependencies like installing sudo dpkg -i ./libc6_2.13-20ubuntu5.1_i386.deb – hlitz – 2013-02-28T06:24:34.177

I found the packages by googling the exact package name and had to resolve some dependencies: sudo dpkg -i ./libc-bin_2.13-20ubuntu5.1_amd64.deb then sudo dpkg -i ./libc6_2.13-20ubuntu5.1_i386.deb then sudo dpkg -i ./libc6_2.13-20ubuntu5.1_amd64.deb did the trick – hlitz – 2013-02-28T06:27:58.587

@hlitz: cool, glad you were able to dig up the packages. – 0xC0000022L – 2013-02-28T06:38:12.483

I've been struggling with libc-bin dependencies because I had installed a version higher than needed. Using deb packages isn't the way we should to upgrade particular packages. So, in my case, i did:

sudo aptitude install libc-bin

I was curious to see the output result as I needed libc6 to be downgraded too. Aptitude has a nice resolver solution from which I did! This was the solution I was looking for. I guess that any package that needs to be downgraded and has dependencies error, could be solved by this.

PsyberJocker

Posted 2013-02-26T00:59:00.073

Reputation: 1