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

[Peter Jeremy]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 11:00:24AM -0500, Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
>David O'Brien wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 06:00:36PM -0800, Tim Kientzle wrote:
>> > Scenarios that require /rescue are ones in which /bin and /sbin
>> > are unusable, which is almost always going to imply a trashed file
>> > in /bin, /sbin, or /lib.  Thus, most /rescue scenarios are going to
>> > involve locating a good copy of a trashed file to replace a damaged
>> > local copy.
>>
>> NO.  /rescue was allowed in the system to handle the case of a trashed
>> file in /lib[exec].  To allow a sysadmin to recover a system from the
>> same type of mishaps they could before we went to a dynamic /.
>
>Ie, let's do things the same way we did in 1994?

To put it another way.  FreeBSD has never had the ability to recover
from a hosed root or /usr using FTP, though you can use rrestore or
rcp to recover /usr.  There has never been a great groundswell of
complaints about this (offhand, I can't recall any).  Why does this
suddenly become a major issue once / is dynamically linked?

>  Other things have
>changed since then, hard drives and typical root partitions are much
>bigger,

Pre-existing harddrives and root partitions do not magically expand
over time.  A new installation and/or a new harddrive might have a
much bigger root partition but an existing one won't.
 
> and Tim estimated the total bloat from this as 64k.

And then someone else wants their favourite tool which is only another
64K and so on.  Pretty soon you have a 200MB /rescue.

>  Maybe
>earlier, pre-/rescue, you couldn't recover from damaged files in the
>root partition without a CD/floppy/NFS, it doesn't mean you should not
>have that capability in /rescue.  

If no-one's missed it in the past, why would they suddenly need it now?

Peter