Subject: Re: /etc/rc.d/ldconfig, ELF and a.out
To: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
From: Frederick Bruckman <fredb@immanent.net>
List: tech-misc
Date: 06/03/2004 18:16:17
On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Manuel Bouyer wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:26:49PM +0100, David Brownlee wrote:
> > 	For ELF systems there does not seem to be much point in running
> > 	/etc/rc.d/ldconfig to generate the 'a.out runtime link editor
> > 	directory cache'. At the very least there should be an rcvar
> > 	for it, and I would suggest defaulting it to 'off'.
> >
> > 	The only port that is still a.out is pc532, which is stuck at
> > 	1.5.3 anyway.
> >
> > 	Would anyone have any objections to such a change?
>
> It's there to build the cache for a.out compatibility, isn't it ?
> I agree there should now be a way to disable it, but maybe it shouldn't
> default to off ...

Is the cache actually needed to use a.out shared libraries? If not,
then we really don't need to run "ldconfig" at startup. Running at
startup was a dumb design decision in the first place; it should be
done when the files are installed, like the XFree86 font caches, or
maybe weekly, like the "whatis"  database.

Frederick