Upgrading glibc on a redhat 9 (shrike)

I need to upgrade my glibc from 2.3.2 to minimum 2.3.4 in order to install lazarus&fpc.
I am a noob when it comes to such operations (well, when it's not working)
I spent over 3 hours trying to figure out YUM, since I read that does it faster and without hassle.
I ran yum update glibc and yum upgrade glibc but It just didn't find any packages.
I also edited yum.conf which now looks like:

********************************
[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=redhat-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
 
[base]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/$releasever/$basearch/
 
[freshrpmsde2]
name=freshrpms
baseurl=ftp://ftp.de2.freshrpms.net/pub/linux/freshrpms/ayo/redhat/9/i386/os/
 
[updates]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - Updates
baseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/updates/$releasever/
 
[NewRPMS]
name=Fedora Core 1 NewRPMS.sunsite.dk
baseurl=http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/apt/redhat/en/i386/fc1
 
[ayo]
name=ayo
baseurl=http://ayo.freshrpms.net/redhat/9/i386/os/
 
[dulug]
name=dulug
baseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/9/i386/

*****************************

but same results. my yum version is 2.0.7. I tried installing latest stable (3.5 if my memory servers me correctly), but it complained about python not finding yum package and after a few minute sof googleing for the cause, I gave up. yum not finding yum? makes no sense to me.

so then I got pissed and decided to do it the old fashion way: source tarball, configure/make/make install. I tried this with 2.3.4 and 2.3.5 and in both cases, after over 30 minutes of compilation I got the following errors:

/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread_pic.a(pthread.os)(.text+0x1ba): In function `pthread_initialize':
/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads/pthread.c:549: undefined reference to `_res'
/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread_pic.a(pthread.os)(.text+0xd12): In function `__pthread_reset_main_thread':
/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads/pthread.c:1145: undefined reference to `_errno'
/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread_pic.a(pthread.os)(.text+0xd1e):/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads/pthread.c:1146: undefined reference to `_h_errno'
/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread_pic.a(pthread.os)(.text+0xd30):/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads/pthread.c:1147: undefined reference to `_res'
/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread_pic.a(pthread.os)(.data.rel+0x1b8): In function `pthread_initialize':
/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads/pthread.c:549: undefined reference to `_errno'
/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread_pic.a(pthread.os)(.data.rel+0x1c0):/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads/pthread.c:549: undefined reference to `_h_errno'
/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread_pic.a(pthread.os)(.data.rel+0x1c8):/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads/pthread.c:553: undefined reference to `_res'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [/root/glibc-build/linuxthreads/libpthread.so] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/root/glibc-2.3.5/linuxthreads'
make[1]: *** [linuxthreads/others] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/glibc-2.3.5'
make: *** [all] Error 2

(configure was run with: ../glibc-2.3.5/configure --enable-add-ons=linuxthreads --disable-sanity-checks . I disabled saniyu checks to get rid of the prefix warning/error since doing an upgrade would not have any issues if installing over old glibc (at least that's what I'm thinking))

I already wasted the weekend over this. I need a solution for upgrading my glibc which works for my system.
if that means doing something to yum, or installing apt or whatever, so be it, but I need it to work. the fact that it works on centos 4 or whatever is not helping me. chaning the OS is not an option.
what I don't get is why in the world are the sources not compiling. I never had this before.