Edgy Eft Glibc/Pthread Dependency Problem

As ever, when you are playing with a development version of a distro ^[1] things can, occasionally ((OK, I must have been lucky)), break. I’ve just got bitten with the following error:

Matching libraries: /usr/lib/libpthread.so.20 /lib/ld-linux.so.2

A copy of glibc was found in an unexpected directory.
It is not safe to upgrade the C library in this situation;
please remove that copy of the C library and try again.

As you might guess, this blocks apt-get dist-upgrade because it is (not unreasonably) being paranoid about not leaving your system in an completely stuffed state. So I went and consulted the Oracle ^[2] and found a rather nice page on debugging dpkg dependency problems ^[3] by Dan Shearer ^[4], an ex-Aussie now in Edinburgh.

I’m going to give this a try and see what happens, if you don’t hear from me for a few days then you know I messed something up. 🙂

Update: It worked, all that was needed was:

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/temp
sudo mv /usr/lib/libpthread* /usr/lib/temp/
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo mv /usr/lib/temp/* /usr/lib