Re: problems with netcdf/Perl (-fPIC?)

• To: Steve Diggs <sdiggs@xxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: problems with netcdf/Perl (-fPIC?)
• From: Ed Hill <ed@xxxxxxx>
• Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:57:03 -0400

On Fri, 2005-09-30 at 11:21 -0700, Steve Diggs wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> The last time I compiled and installed both netCDF and the Perl
> interface was about 5 years ago under Solaris.
> 
> That machine was recently replaced with a spanking new AMD-64 dual-core
> system running RedHat EL-4.
> 
> (BTW, this all works as advertised with a Xeon/Dell system under RH
> EL-3)
> 
> The latest version of the netcdf library itself compiled and installed
> without incident, however, the newest version of the perl interface
> (netcdf-perl-1.2.3) wasn't as cooperative.  Following the "INSTALL"
> notes as well as I could, I got the configure program to run just fine,
> but when I executed *make* , I got this:
> 
> "/usr/bin/ld: /usr/local/lib/libnetcdf.a(v2i.o): relocation R_X86_64_32S
> against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object;
> recompile with -fPIC
> /usr/local/lib/libnetcdf.a: could not read symbols: Bad value"
> 
> and of course the make failed.  It failed on this command:
> 
> "gcc  -shared NetCDF.o  -o blib/arch/auto/NetCDF/NetCDF.so   -
> L/usr/local/lib -lnetcdf"
> 
> So I tried adding in the -fPIC (as instructed above by ld) to the
> compile line above and got a stream of errors and a worse failure.
> 
> Has anyone seen this type of error before?  If so, any help would be
> appreciated.

Hi Steve,

Yes, I've seen this error many times!  In all likelihood, it means that
your netCDF library should have been compiled with the '-fPIC' option.

There is a netCDF package in Fedora Extras (I maintain it) that has the
"-fPIC" options set the way you want and you can grab the SRPM(s) at:

  http://fedoraproject.org/extras/4/SRPMS/
  http://fedoraproject.org/extras/4/SRPMS/netcdf-3.6.0-7.p1.fc4.src.rpm

Since Fedora is the testing grounds or "beta" for RHEL, you should have
very little difficulty building a binary RPM for your RHEL setup.

hope that helps!
Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Rm 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
             Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
emails:  eh3@xxxxxxx                ed@xxxxxxx
URLs:    http://web.mit.edu/eh3/    http://eh3.com/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464

• References:
  • problems with netcdf/Perl (-fPIC?)
    • From: Steve Diggs