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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!helena.MT.net!nate From: nate@trout.sri.MT.net (Nate Williams) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Static vs. Shared binaries in / Date: 8 Jun 1995 18:24:16 GMT Organization: SRI Intl. - Montana Operations Lines: 35 Message-ID: <3r7f8g$fb4@helena.MT.net> References: <3qfn52$188j@troy.la.locus.com> <3qo3m8$aq7@park.uvsc.edu> <3qvdsn$ioo@helena.MT.net> <3qvs1d$oj6@park.uvsc.edu> Reply-To: "Nate Williams" <nate@sneezy.sri.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: trout.sri.mt.net In article <3qvs1d$oj6@park.uvsc.edu>, Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> wrote: >Several of us have argued for a long time that most system binaries >could be dynamically linked, with the exception of init. > >Some of us have even proven it by running our systems that way. So? You're more careful than the average person about installing things into your root partition. I ran with a shared / for awhile, and I hated it. Basicaly, my system went completely belly-up when I replaced libc.so since all of the entry points of running programs changed. This is *not* good with a system that uses the FS binaries for backing store. The current system is the 'safest' way of recovering a system that gets something critical munged. With shared binaries in /, there are many more opportunities for bad things to happen due to OS bugs, user stupidity, misunderstandings, power failures, than with linking everything static. I prefer 'safe' over 'it works on my system'. As Jordan pointed out, recovering a bogus library or ld.so is very easy to do with the current scheme. If you wipe any of the multiple libraries, ld.so. or even munge up a directory entry which leads to any of these in your system it's a done deal. Can you say 'flopp time'? With static versions, there are fewer things to go wrong. Nate -- nate@sneezy.sri.com | Research Engineer, SRI Intl. - Montana Operations nate@trout.sri.MT.net | Loving life in God's country, the great state of work #: (406) 449-7662 | Montana. Wanna go fishing? Send me email, and we'll home #: (406) 443-7063 | setup something.