[Date Prev][Date Next] [Chronological] [Thread] [Top]

Re: BDB 4.3 instability

Craig Worgan wrote: 
Howard,

I am running OpenLDAP on a paired down version of RHEL5.1.  We build
OpenLDAP and roll our own RPM due to our requirement for the PPOLICY
module and our desire to be able to pick up different OpenLDAP versions
for new features and bug fixes.  Yesterday I tried building 2.4 due to
your recommendation from another post, and got the following build
error:

checking for Berkeley DB major version... 4
checking for Berkeley DB minor version... 3
checking for Berkeley DB link (-ldb-4.3)... yes
checking for Berkeley DB version match... yes
checking for Berkeley DB thread support... yes
checking Berkeley DB version for BDB/HDB backends... no
configure: error: BDB/HDB: BerkeleyDB version incompatible

During my investigation I discovered the FAQ about BBD 4.3 being
unstable.  I took this information to my platform/base team and we
discussed upgrading the library for all of our apps, as it's a commonly
used shared library.  They want to bring this info to RedHat and they
asked me to dig into the statement that BDB 4.3 is unstable.

We tested BDB 4.3 heavily when it first appeared in 2005. In those tests we found that it tended to SEGV under heavy concurrent load. Building against BDB 4.2 showed none of these problems. You can probably check the openldap-devel archives from that timeframe for more details.

I also forwarded this information to the RedHat/FedoraDS team when I saw them integrating BDB 4.3 support in November 2006, but they ignored the info.

As usual, the RedHat folks are not only clueless, but aggressively so.

I do appreciate the help and didn't intend it to come across otherwise.

Buchan knows what he's doing... If you don't want to follow his approach you might want to consider using commercially supported RPMs from people who are actually competent in supporting OpenLDAP (e.g., from Symas) to save yourself all of this hassle.
--
-- Howard Chu
CTO, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/