Subject: Re: the /sys symlink gets recreated all the time.
To: Simon Burge <simonb@wasabisystems.com>
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>
List: tech-install
Date: 12/11/2000 22:11:59
> I'm one of these folks who doesn't like things to get updated on a
> "make build" if it hasn't changed, and one visible thing that has
> always bugged me is the /sys symlink.  Can anyone see anything wrong
> with the trailing patch to fix this?

This has the same problem as the current, from my perspective, in that
it removes the old /sys symlink. I don't see any reason to do that.

Of course, I didn't get any response to my inquiry about it some time
ago.

--jhawk

From jhawk@mit.edu Sat Aug 12 21:52:23 2000
  by mail.netbsd.org with SMTP; 12 Aug 2000 21:52:22 -0000
        by zorkmid.mit.edu (8.10.2/8.8.8) id e7CLq3h21990;
        Sat, 12 Aug 2000 17:52:03 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 17:52:03 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200008122152.e7CLq3h21990@zorkmid.mit.edu>
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>
To: tech-userlevel@netbsd.org
Subject: Why does distrib-dirs blow away /sys?

Why does etc/Makefile create /sys?:

   240  distrib-dirs:
   241          ${INSTALL} ${INSTPRIV} -d -o root -g wheel -m 755 ${DESTDIR}
   242          -mtree -def mtree/NetBSD.dist -p ${DESTDIR}/ -u
   243          cd ${DESTDIR}; rm -f sys; ln -s usr/src/sys sys
 
Personally, I find this annoying if I happen to have a machine with
different user and kernel versions (e.g. running a 1.5B kernel and
a 1.5_ALPHA2 userland), and a 'make build' blows away my /sys symlink
and repoints it to the wrong tree.

Why is creation of the /sys symlink done in distrib-dirs? It's called
by the 'beforeinstall' target, presumably so that 'make build'
can install what it needs to install. But it should not be installing
anything in /sys, so this seems wrong.

Opinions?

--jhawk