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Re: root's shell
Alexander L. Belikoff wrote:
> Nobody cares about a RAM space they'd occupy - they're not intended
> for everyday use. They are just for *critical* cases.
But aren't you talking about programs like sh, rm, ls, cp, ln etc,
which are being used all the time? I'd like such programs to be
"cheap" to run.
> > Yes, but having other options doesn't mean you have to take them -
> > they might be just worse.
>
> Well, from my very own experience of dealing with Linux, SCO, and
> SunOS machines I learned that it is VERY good when you have 2
> ways. Back then, SunOS (4.0) didn't have a decent rescue disk - only
> an emergency boot. And you know, one day the Murphy's law becomes true
> - one of ignorant idiots around decided to "save" some power by
> turning the external SCSI tape drive off, which was NOT good, since
> the thing was hanging on the same sontroller as the SCSI disc inside
> and they both had the same power chain. The system lasted long enough
> until the next massive swapping request and then died a horrible death
> ;-). And you know what got damaged? Right: the kernel binary and
> libc.so* While I was perfectly able to boot using an emergency boot
> disc, I couldn't run any single program because of the libraries.It
You should have had libraries on the emergency disk - that's how
I'd define an emergancy tool - "something which can be usefull and
self-contained when everything else breaks".
> was not funny - we had to bring the damn thing to our commercial
> provider to reinstall the system.
But those "statically linked" files could have been damaged just
as well. In your case another copy of the shared libs could save
the situation, as well as having them (and/or other critical files)
on a tape or other parts of the disk.
BTW, couldn't you copy the libs from the installation disk?
> Anyway, apart from all blah-blah, I still think that having a
> statically-linked copy of most critical programs IS important despite
> the existence of rescue disks.
Do what you like, it's a free country (for now), but I suspect you are
decieving yourself and one day you might find that having static
binaries around (and having them slow down your system) didn't help
you much because they got screwed too in the system crash.
--Amos
--Amos Shapira | "Of course Australia was marked for
| glory, for its people had been chosen
amos@gezernet.co.il | by the finest judges in England."
| -- Anonymous
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