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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!venus.sun.com!nntp-hub2.barrnet.net!news1.digital.com!pa.dec.com!erandall From: erandall@reo.dec.com (Ed Randall) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Major strcmp bug under BSD 2.0? Date: 9 Jun 1995 14:37:23 GMT Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Palo Alto, CA, USA Lines: 41 Message-ID: <3r9mb3$a5u$1@usenet.pa.dec.com> References: <3qfn52$188j@troy.la.locus.com> <3qo3m8$aq7@park.uvsc.edu> <3qvdsn$ioo@helena.MT.net> <3qvs1d$oj6@park.uvsc.edu> <3r0l05$58c@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: cics03.reo.dec.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Jordan K. Hubbard (jkh@violet.berkeley.edu) wrote: : In article <3qvs1d$oj6@park.uvsc.edu>, : Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> wrote: : > : >Some of us have even proven it by running our systems that way. : > : >The argument that it aids recovery is bogus unless you statically : >link the entire tool chain needed to get a working ld.so. : Bogus? Oh, I don't think so. Assuming that the resurrection of the : tool chain is your only possible recourse, then sure - your argument : holds water. However, thank heavens that Real Life(tm) is somewhat : more flexible! I've resurrected my ld.so by discovering it in : my /usr/obj dir and copying it up, by tftp'ing it, by grabbing it off : of a DOS floppy, all kinds of ways! Not once have I needed to reboot : the machine from a floppy or do anything really drastic to get ld.so back. : It was usually enough to go "woo sh*t! did I really just do that??" : and use one of the many fine _statically linked_ tools to copy a new : one into place before things got too far out of hand! :-) As anyone who runs Slackware Linux 1.2.0, and tried to use their pkgtool to upgrade "libc" will be well aware, heh heh heh. Damn thing just removes it, then the whole system stops working. Maybe it's Linux's way of teaching newbies about the differences between static & dynamic linking, it certainly brought the stark reality home to me :-) You don't need all the tools to COMPILE ld.so, you just need enough to be able to mount the fixit floppy, and copy the library from there. (With Slackware 1.2.0 this was not possible; After most things (cp, ls, find, ... ) stopped working, I rebooted, and then found even init didn't work before realising what the cause was. Luckily I DID have a fixit floppy kicking around, but a few basic static tools would've been nice, then I could have rescued byself using that nice CD which I could no longer access ...) Fortunately I saw the light and erased the whole OS in favour of FreeBSD shortly after that incident. Keep up the good work ! Ed Randall freelance software engineer. ed@orlando.demon.co.uk Holding my breath for 2.0.5-R