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From: paul@myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul)
Subject: Re: Taylor UUCP on FreeBSD???
Message-ID: <1994Jun22.184617.10333@cm.cf.ac.uk>
Sender: paul@myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul)
Organization: ELSYM, University of Wales, College of Cardiff, UK.
References: <1994Jun13.040754.17764@kosman.uucp> <RS ANDERS.94Jun21155032@hrothgar.mindspring.com> <2u7tcb$6mr@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <RSANDERS.94Jun22110639@hrothgar.mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 1994 18:46:16 +0000
Lines: 82
In article <RSANDERS.94Jun22110639@hrothgar.mindspring.com>,
Robert Sanders <rsanders@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <2u7tcb$6mr@pdq.coe.montana.edu> nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) writes:
>
> >Well, that's a valid argument on Linux, but FreeBSD (and I suppose
> >NetBSD) think that shared libraries belong in /usr/lib. I disagree,
>
> As a FreeBSD developer, I'll give a quick WHY we did it that way.
>
> 1) / (root) should be small.
> 2) Given the above, putting the entire shared library in /root makes
> no sense due to size, even offsetting the savings in the small
> number of shared binaries.
>
>Linux's shared libc and libm add up to about 280K (they look bigger,
>but they contain holes). I really couldn't tell you for sure how much
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Uhh, I don't entirely follow the relevance of that.
In any case, that's hardly the entire /usr/lib now is it? Our
libc.so is 398K and libm is 56K. The entire /usr/lib is over 3Mb
and that's without the profiled libraries and no old shared libraries.
>
> 3) Breaking up a standalone library for the root partition is wasteful
> since the code will be also needed for other binaries.
>
>Could you explain this a little more? I'm not sure I understand.
I think he means splitting a single library into smaller ones so you can
just have the needed bits in the / version, though I'm not sure, doesn't
parse that well.
> 5) ld.so doesn't NEED to be in /root, and there is less likely for
> something bad to get hosed up when doing updates. The more dependant
> you are on particular tools, the more likely one of them is to break.
> Upon bootup there are 2 CRITICAL binaries. 'init' and 'sh' for
> safety reasons should be linked static IMHO.
>
>This is a different argument from whether or not the shared libraries
>should be accessible at boottime and used by binaries on the root
>partition. I have no argument with this.
Well, not really. The only reason that there are binaries on root
in the first place is to use them for booting and when down single
user performing repairs. Given those two criteria most of the binaries
on / are pretty important. If you ever have a crash where the shared libs
on / get hosed you'll realise how much of a pain this can be because the
tools you need to repair the system won't run.
>
> >install bash as /bin/sh because ash just wouldn't cut several scripts
> >we used.
>
> Fix ash. :-)
>
>Although I normally find the FreeBSD developers as reasonable as any
>people on Usenet, this is definitely from left field. Let's compact
>all this discussion into a quick dialogue:
>
>user: "Hey, ash doesn't run some standard 'sh' scripts, but bash
> does."
>nate: "ash is smaller. You don't need the interactive bloat for
> /bin/sh."
>user: "Smaller, yes, but it doesn't work."
>nate: "So fix ash."
>
Well, in Nate's defence there was a :-) after his statement. In any case,
there are some good reasons why we'd have this attitude anyway.
1) bash is GNU software and we don't want restricted code in our
main source tree.
2) It's very big and size is at a premium on /
3) Fixing ash is the more "correct" solution.
--
Paul Richards, FreeBSD core team member.
Intelligent Systems Laboratory, ELSYM ,University of Wales, College Cardiff
Internet: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk, JANET(UK): RICHARDSDP@CARDIFF.AC.UK