HEADS UP: /bin and /sbin are now dynamically linked

[Richard Coleman]

Tim Kientzle wrote:

> I'm pretty comfortable with the failsafes that we
> have in place:
>  * /sbin/init is static
>  * If /bin/sh fails, /rescue/sh can be run
>  * /rescue provides a complete set of statically-linked
>    sysadmin utilities that should be sufficient
>    for recovering a damaged system.
> 
> There are a few things I'd like to see:
>  * It would be nice if the kernel noticed that /sbin/init
>    failed too quickly and prompted the user for an alternate
>    init.  That would open the door to a dynamic or just more
>    ambitious /sbin/init, since you could always fall back
>    to /rescue/init for recovery.
>  * /rescue/vi is currently unusable if /usr is missing because
>    the termcap database is in /usr.  One possibility
>    would be to build a couple of default termcap entries
>    into ncurses or into vi.

Just put a tiny termcap file in /rescue (i.e. termcap.rescue) that 
contains 5 or 6 of the most common terminal types (cons25, vt102, etc), 
and have /rescue/vi default to cons25.  That is cleaner than hard coding 
them into /rescue/vi.

Richard Coleman
richardcoleman at mindspring.com