Invoking ldconfig without arguments wipes all hints and makes me very sad

[Derek Ragona]

At 02:30 PM 4/10/2008, Shelby Cain wrote:
>Greetings list.  I'm a new user to FreeBSD and I just managed to
>introduce myself to ldconfig's default behavior.  I'm currently locked
>out of my remote server since bash isn't statically compiled and will
>have to get physical access to correct my blunder.  :(
>
>As a new user to FreeBSD, ldconfig's default behavior makes about as
>much sense to me as rm adding "-fr ~" or kill adding "-9 1" in the
>absence of arguments.  I hate to sound ignorant but I have to ask, is
>there any particular reason FreeBSD's ldconfig defaults to this
>seemingly unintuitive and non-newbie-safe behavior?
>
>Would a patch that changes the behavior of ldconfig to assume -r in the
>absence of command line arguments and adds a new parameter like
>-e[rase]|-d[estroy]|-w[ipe]|-z[ap]|-l[olnewbie] to enable the original
>behavior be likely to gain any acceptance?
>
>Regards,
>
>Shelby Cain

I can't speak about ldconfig but will say that most utilities you run as 
root have inherent dangers.  Many of us that have worked with various 
flavors of unix have the scars from doing dumb things.  I myself made the 
common mistake of doing rm -rf while in the / directory on a server.  Boy 
it was fun reloading that server ;-)

Do some reading, and check man pages before you execute new utilities.

As for bash, you can compile and install it statically linked from the ports.

         -Derek

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