Compiling tcpsplice on a 64-bit machine

Question

I am trying to compile a small utility called tcpslice . It's the typical GNU C application. When I run ./configure , here is the output:

checking build system type... Invalid configuration `x86_64-pc-linux-gnuoldld': machine `x86_64-pc' not recognized
configure: error: /bin/sh ./config.sub x86_64-pc-linux-gnuoldld failed

It appears to not support compilation as a 64-bit Linux application. So I have a few questions:

1. Is it possible to set some flags to compile the application as 32-bit AND be able to run it on my 64-bit operating system?
2. Is it possible to update the configure script to support 64-bit Linux? If so, will I be making some serious code changes in the .c files as well?
3. I noticed a 64-bit RHEL6 machine on my network has this utility installed and running with an identical version number (1.2a3). Could I somehow download the source that was used to build it? I can get access the to RHN if necessary.

Answer 1

Is it possible to set some flags to compile the application as 32-bit AND be able to run it on my 64-bit operating system?

Yes. -m32 is the option.

Is it possible to update the configure script to support 64-bit Linux? If so, will I be making some serious code changes in the .c files as well?

You will have to make some code changes to make a purely 32 bit application work on 64 bit. Here's a link that talks about porting code from 32 bit to 64 bit.

I am sorry, I do not know the answer for your 3rd question.

Hope the little information provided by me helps in some way.

Answer 2

You've misinterpreted what the configure script is telling you. The solution has nothing to do with CPU bitness.

The error comes down to a too-old version of config.guess , which the package creator generated with libtoolize . To fix it, you will need to have libtool installed, then say:

$ libtoolize --force

You'll find that configure now runs, because libtoolize overwrote the tarball version of config.guess with one appropriate to your system.

You may run into another problem, a "missing" bpf.h file. Just edit tcpslice.c and change this line:

#include <net/bpf.h>

to:

#include <pcap-bpf.h>

With those two changes, I got tcpslice to build on my 64-bit CentOS 5 box.

Answer 3

install following packages :

 $apt-get install ia32-libs.

for rhel its different :

look at the answer to this question :

CentOS 64 bit bad ELF interpreter