VS Code Remote-SSH is a game-changer for remote development. However, if you’ve tried a recent version of VS Code (1.99.x or later) to connect to an older Linux distro, you may encounter this error:

[LinuxPrereqs]: The remote host may not meet VS Code Server's prerequisites for glibc and libstdc++ (The remote host does not meet the prerequisites for running VS Code Server)

This error indicates that the system requires:

  • glibc >= 2.28
  • libstdc++ >= 3.4.25

This issue is common with older CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu LTS systems.

Fortunately, a workaround using brew, glibc, and patchelf can enable Remote-SSH on unsupported Linux targets. This guide will walk you through the steps.

Solutions

  1. Install glibc and patchelf using brew (Homebrew), or build from source, or use a prebuilt binary (if available). This guide uses brew. Also you can see this.
  2. Use environment variables to point VS Code to the custom glibc and patchelf.

Install glibc and patchelf

By default, glibc gets installed by brew. Run the following commands:

brew --prefix glibc
# Output: /home/username/.homebrew/opt/glibc (example output)

Install patchelf:

brew install patchelf
which patchelf
# Output: /home/username/.homebrew/bin/patchelf

Set Remote Environment

Set the following environment variables:

export VSCODE_SERVER_CUSTOM_GLIBC_LINKER=/home/username/.homebrew/opt/glibc/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
export VSCODE_SERVER_CUSTOM_GLIBC_PATH=/home/username/.homebrew/opt/glibc/lib
export VSCODE_SERVER_PATCHELF_PATH=/home/username/.homebrew/bin/patchelf

If you use the bash shell, add the above lines to the remote ~/.bash_profile. For the zsh shell, add them to ~/.zprofile.

You can now proceed to connect with VS Code Remote-SSH, and it should work as expected. Let me know if you encounter any issues!