securelevel and make installworld

[Ronald Klop]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:28:06 -0500, Jon Noack <noackjr at alumni.rice.edu>  
wrote:

> On 04/20/05 15:16, Ronald Klop wrote:
>> Can make installworld complain on startup if I try to run it with   
>> securelevel > 0.
>> It will fail half way through on some files with nochg flags or  
>> something  like that.
>
> Design feature:
> 'schg' is the system immutable flag.  Some system files are installed  
> with 'schg' for security reasons; installworld must remove this flag in  
> order to install a new version of these files.  However, when  
> securelevel > 0 system immutable flags may not be turned off (see  
> init(8)).  An attempt to remove the system immutable flag (set 'noschg')  
> will therefore fail.  As a result, installworld fails.
>
> Canonical answer:
> Reboot into single user mode to perform the installworld as documented  
> in UPDATING and section 19.4.1 of the handbook.

I understand the problem, otherwise I wouldn't have securelevel > 0. Doing  
a remote install in single user mode isn't always possible.
And than it isn't very nice to break the installworld with an error. Using  
the idea of 'fail early' it would be very nice too have a check for  
securelevel in the installworld Makefile.

Ronald.

-- 
  Ronald Klop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands