Running rtl_sdr on Debian 7, GLIBC

I'm trying to run RTL_SDR on Debian 7, but I keep getting the following errors:

/usr/bin/rtl_sdr: /lib/mipsel-linux/gnu/libc.so.6: version 'GLIB_2.17' not found (required by /lib/libusb-1.0.so.0)
/usr/bin/rtl_sdr: /lib/mipsel-linux/gnu/libc.so.6: version 'GLIB_2.25' not found (required by /lib/libudev.so.1)
/usr/bin/rtl_sdr: /lib/mipsel-linux/gnu/libc.so.6: version 'GLIB_2.16' not found (required by /lib/libudev.so.1)
/usr/bin/rtl_sdr: /lib/mipsel-linux/gnu/libc.so.6: version 'GLIB_2.26' not found (required by /lib/libudev.so.1)
/usr/bin/rtl_sdr: /lib/mipsel-linux/gnu/libc.so.6: version 'GLIB_2.17' not found (required by /lib/libudev.so.1)
/usr/bin/rtl_sdr: /lib/mipsel-linux/gnu/libc.so.6: version 'GLIB_2.14' not found (required by /lib/libudev.so.1)

I also ran dpkg -l, which states this:

ii glibc 2.27-1 mipsel The GNU libc libraries

I'm running this on a MIPSEL machine, so any links to MIPSEL binaries would be appreciated, but any help in general would also be appreciated as well.

How you should proceed depends on what you are trying to accomplish and what your constraints are along several axis.

odds are anything you need can be found via http://archive.debian.org or https://snapshot.debian.org/.

To start: Installing a new libc version into an ancient Debian install risks messing a lot of things up. Hopefully you've got a backup image of this system you can go back to if needed.

If the option is available you could always move to a newer version of Debian before trying to install rtl-sdr. I assume you have reasons for not having pursued that route.

It looks like there was a version of rtl-sdr 0.5.3 available in the Wheezy-backports repository. You should be able to add the relevant sources.list entries and install it via APT without needing to mess with the core OS. See https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive.

If you need a newer version of rtl-sdr and need to stay on Debian 7 you could create a chroot environment on the device where you can experiment with different library versions without risking the rest of the system. You could even install Debian 8 in it and try the version that shipped there. It's possible you could run into kernel compatibility issues going that route but most things will work across a version or two.

there's a decent chance you could custom compile it to fit your needs too for that matter.