The program cannot find correct version of glibc/libstdc++, although it was statically linked

Question

I am trying to link my program statically with glibc, because version of the glibc on the target machine is pretty much unpredictable. I used linker flags -static-libgcc and -static-libstdc++ and it worked fine. The executable is big, but I can live with it. Unfortunately, when I run my executable on the target machine (it is named 'mytest' in the example below) I get the following error:

./mytest: /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.11' not found (required by libboost_log.so.1.53.0)
./mytest: /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.15' not found (required by libboost_log.so.1.53.0)
./mytest: /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by libboost_log.so.1.53.0)
./mytest: /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.15' not found (required by libboost_date_time.so.1.53.0)
./mytest: /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by libboost_thread.so.1.53.0)

If I do 'strings' on mytest, it gives me

$ strings mytest | grep GLIBC
GLIBC_2.9
GLIBC_2.7
GLIBC_2.8
GLIBC_2.3.2
GLIBC_2.2.5
GLIBCXX_3.4.15
GLIBCXX_3.4.11
GLIBCXX_3.4.14
GLIBCXX_3.4.9
GLIBCXX_3.4

What means, I think, that the static linking was working ok. Why does the loader still tries to look for my functions in shared glibc and libstdc++? What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I am trying to link my program statically with glibc, because version of the glibc on the target machine is pretty much unpredictable. I used linker flags -static-libgcc and -static-libstdc++ and it worked fine.

That didn't affect the version of glibc (libc), which is different from libgcc and libstdc++. With these flags, you still have produced a dynamically-linked executable, which is expected to not work on an older distribution.

You can link your executable with -static flag, and that should give you a completely static executable.

Update:

After re-reading your question; your problem is not with glibc. Your problem is that you are linking with libboost_log.so, which itself depends on libstdc++.so.6.

The answer then is to link with libboost*.a instead of libboost*.so. You can try to achieve it this way:

g++ $(OBJS) -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -Wl,-Bstatic -lboost_log ... \
  -Wl,-Bdynamic

(It is very important to have the trailing -Wl,-Bdynamic.)

Answer 2

Linking with -static-libgcc and -static-libstdc++ will only work for those libraries. It looks like you are also linking against the boost libraries (likely dynamically) which then link against libgcc and libstdc++.

Try running the following:

ldd mytest

It should show "not a dynamic executable". If it shows anything else, it means it is dynamically linked against other libraries. It doesn't always work so easily, but try adding -static to the compilation line as well to take care of remaining libraries.