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Cron failing for /usr/sbin/prelink

Posted by KevinH on Mon, 02/08/2021

I have been getting an email alert for an intermittently failing cronjob (/etc/cron.daily) for a few weeks now. The full email contents follow:
Subject: Anacron job 'cron.daily' on pbx

/etc/cron.daily/prelink:

/etc/cron.daily/prelink: line 47: 118001 Aborted /usr/sbin/prelink -av $PRELINK_OPTS >> /var/log/prelink/prelink.log 2>&1

The more recent entries in /var/log/prelink/prelink.log are:
/usr/sbin/prelink: Could not prelink /usr/bin/nss-policy-check because its dependency /usr/lib64/libsoftokn3.so could not be prelinked
/usr/sbin/prelink: Could not prelink /usr/bin/signtool because its dependency /usr/lib64/libsoftokn3.so could not be prelinked
/usr/sbin/prelink: Could not prelink /usr/lib64/nss/unsupported-tools/pp because its dependency /usr/lib64/libsoftokn3.so could not be prelinked
/usr/sbin/prelink: Could not prelink /usr/lib64/nss/unsupported-tools/derdump because its dependency /usr/lib64/libsoftokn3.so could not be prelinked
/usr/sbin/prelink: Could not prelink /usr/lib64/nss/unsupported-tools/tstclnt because its dependency /usr/lib64/libsoftokn3.so could not be prelinked
/usr/sbin/prelink: Could not prelink /usr/lib64/nss/unsupported-tools/ocspclnt because its dependency /usr/lib64/libsoftokn3.so could not be prelinked
Prelink failed with return value 134

I found other linux users (non-Thirdlane systems) experiencing the same error with different libraries and they were able to silence the error by blacklisting specific folders in /etc/prelink.conf. Is there a better way address this or should it be blacklisted and ignored?


Submitted by thirdlane on Fri, 04/09/2021 Permalink

Hi Kevin,

I am not sure why exactly prelink running under cron does not find the dependencies. This could require a little more investigation ( I ran a failed prelink under root and it worked), but IMHO this is harmless and should be ignored. There are a couple of options - like including extra local library directories in prelink configuration, or as you pointed out, blacklisting the apps and libraries that fail to prelink.

Frankly, I would not bother to do that or to search for culprits as most of the applications on Thirdlane are long running services which don't benefit from faster load as much as frequently running short lived processes that use large number of shared libraries would.