Libraries compatibilty by cross-compiling node for armv5 - c

Question

I try to cross-compile node for my QNAP armv5te machine, on my Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop x64.
A node QPKG exists in QNAP App-center, but its version is old (0.8.22).
Here are informations about the server :
Linux SERVERNAME 3.4.6 #1 Mon Dec 29 06:00:47 CST 2014 armv5tel unknown
Processor name : Feroceon 88F6281 rev 1 (v5l) # 1.2 GHz
BogoMIPS : 1196.85
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp
CPU implementer : 0x56
CPU architecture: 5TE
CPU variant : 0x2
CPU part : 0x131
CPU revision : 1
Hardware : Feroceon-KW
ARM Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000
Here's the command I used on my desktop :
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install emdebian-archive-keyring
apt-get install libc6-armel-cross libc6-dev-armel-cross
apt-get install binutils-arm-linux-gnueabi
apt-get install gcc-4.7-arm-linux-gnueabi
apt-get install g++-4.7-arm-linux-gnueabi
apt-get install u-boot-tools
apt-get install libncurses5-dev
ln -s /user/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc-4.7 /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc
ln -s /user/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-g++-4.7 /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-g++
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-v0.10.35/node-v0.10.35.tar.gz
tar -zxf node-v0.10.35.tar.gz
cd node-v0.10.35
export TOOL_PREFIX="arm-linux-gnueabi"
export CC="${TOOL_PREFIX}-gcc"
export CXX="${TOOL_PREFIX}-g++"
export AR="${TOOL_PREFIX}-ar"
export RANLIB="${TOOL_PREFIX}-ranlib"
export LINK="${CXX}"
export CCFLAGS="-march=armv5te -mfpu=softfp -marm"
export CXXFLAGS="-march=armv5te -mno-unaligned-access"
export OPENSSL_armcap=5
export GYPFLAGS="-Darmeabi=soft -Dv8_can_use_vfp_instructions=false -Dv8_can_use_unaligned_accesses=false -Darmv7=0"
export VFP3=off
export VFP2=off
./configure --without-snapshot --dest-cpu=arm --dest-os=linux --prefix="/root/.nvm/v0.10.35"
make -j 4
make install
tar -zcf node-v0.10.35-linux-armv5.tar.gz v0.10.35
The compilation doesn't show any failures with these parameters. So after that I send the tarball to my QNAP server:
scp /root/.nvm/node-v0.10.35-linux-armv5.tar.gz admin#SERVERNAME:/share/HDA_DATA/.qpkg/nodejs
ssh SERVERNAME -l admin
cd /share/HDA_DATA/.qpkg/nodejs
tar -zxf node-v0.10.35-linux-armv5.tar.gz
ln -s v0.10.35 node
All my env variables are already set on my server. Now I can test node binary...
# node -v
node: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `CXXABI_ARM_1.3.3' not found (required by node)
node: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.15' not found (required by node)
node: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.11' not found (required by node)
node: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by node)
Finally I have an error because C libraries are not the same on Ubuntu and Qnap, for Ubuntu desktop I have ldd (Ubuntu EGLIBC 2.19-0ubuntu6.5) 2.19 and on QNAP ldd (GNU libc) 2.5.
libc-dev and libstdc++ are packages handled by Optware ipkg on Qnap, (old versions too).
My question is what is the better way to fix this problem ? Force updating libs on server ? (and how to do that ?) Or maybe use static libs during compilation ? ( and how to do that too ?) Or other options ?
EDIT:
After my conversation with artless-noise, I understood I had several ways to fix library dependencies...
Dependencies in question:
# ldd /opt/bin/node
/opt/node/bin/node: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `CXXABI_ARM_1.3.3' not found (required by /opt/node/bin/node)
/opt/node/bin/node: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.15' not found (required by /opt/node/bin/node)
/opt/node/bin/node: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.11' not found (required by /opt/node/bin/node)
/opt/node/bin/node: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by /opt/node/bin/node)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xb6ed2000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0xb6ec3000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb6de2000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xb6d32000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb6d1e000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xb6cfe000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb6bca000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.3 (0xb6ee4000)
Copy libraries from Ubuntu GCC to the target machine, and override default ones :
It could be really dangerous, and may brick the system. To more, my goal is to create a QPKG for QNAP community, so ask people to override their C libs is not a really nice method.
Copy libraries and cohabit with original ones :
A nice method, just need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to a dir containing newest libs for the application. But I found an error using this method, again with c++ lib.
The error:
node: symbol lookup error: /opt/node/lib/c/libstdc++.so.6: undefined symbol: _ZNSt11__timepunctIcE2idE, version GLIBCXX_3.4
Create a static application :
Finally, I found the way to do it without any errors during compilation, and during execution on the target machine. Just need to add some flags.
New flags:
export CCFLAGS="-march=armv5te -mfpu=softfp -marm -static-libgcc"
export CXXFLAGS="-march=armv5te -mno-unaligned-access -static-libstdc++"
export LDFLAGS="-static"
Checking dynamic library links:
# ldd /opt/bin/node
not a dynamic executable
# npm version
{ test: '1.0.0',
npm: '2.3.0',
ares: '1.9.0-DEV',
http_parser: '1.0',
modules: '11',
node: '0.10.35',
openssl: '1.0.1j',
uv: '0.10.30',
v8: '3.14.5.9',
zlib: '1.2.8' }
EDIT: Finally a problem is again here, most of the node functions work, but not http...
i tested a simple script (from NodeJS API) to get info about a web page:
http.get("http://www.google.com/index.html", function(res) {
console.log("Got response: " + res.statusCode);
}).on('error', function(e) {
console.log("Got error: " + e.message);
});
And I got Got error: getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND, is it possible because node is static some features can't work ?

Answer 1

Finally, instead of trying to change libraries, I decided to have a better cross-compiler which matches with my target perfectly.
I used Crosstools-NG for that, but I could use the official QNAP Maxwell-ARM Toolchain too (I saw it too late...)
gcc (GCC) 4.2.4
g++ (GCC) 4.2.4
GNU ld (crosstool-NG 1.20.0) 2.19.1
ldd (crosstool-NG) 1.20.0
Python 2.7.6 (with gyp)
But a problem was always here, there's a node dependecy (libuv) which uses a library named linux-atomic, and that library was introduced in GCC since version 4.4.X. So here is the workaround I made to fix it :
cd /src
wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.6.3/gcc-core-4.6.3.tar.gz
tar -zxf gcc-core-4.6.3.tar.gz
sed -i -e 's/define HIDDEN.*/define HIDDEN/' /src/gcc-4.6.3/gcc/config/arm/linux-atomic.c
export CC=arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc
export AR=arm-none-linux-gnueabi-ar
export RANLIB=arm-none-linux-gnueabi-ranlib
cd /src/gcc-4.6.3/gcc/config/arm
libtool --tag=CC --mode=compile $CC -g -O2 -MT linux-atomic.lo -MD -MP -MF linux-atomic.Tpo -c -o linux-atomic.lo linux-atomic.c
$AR cru /src/gcc-4.6.3/gcc/config/arm/.libs/liblinux-atomic.a /src/gcc-4.6.3/gcc/config/arm/.libs/linux-atomic.o
$RANLIB /src/gcc-4.6.3/gcc/config/arm/.libs/liblinux-atomic.a
# IMPORTANT: Assign environment variables like I made in my question above.
# Go to node src dir and configure
./configure --without-snapshot --dest-cpu=arm --dest-os=linux --prefix="${PREFIX_DIR}"
# When configuration is done, edit out/node.target.mk
vi out/node.target.mk
# Find LD_INPUTS files list and add your new library as last one:
# -> /src/gcc-4.6.3/gcc/config/arm/.libs/liblinux-atomic.a
# Now you can build node !
make -j4 #-jX where X is the number of available cores
make install DESTDIR=$TEMPDIR # Use DESTDIR to avoid installation directly in $PREFIX_DIR path
Workaround reference
With that configuration, I also could compile node with GCC 4.1.3 for x86 processors. And I made QPKG for QNAP users who doesn't want to compile by themselves : https://github.com/jbltx/nodejs-QPKG/tree/master/node-v0.10.35