Subject: Re: RFC: migration to a fully dynamically linked system
To: John Nemeth <jnemeth@victoria.tc.ca>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@netbsd.org>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 01/04/2002 12:47:21
On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, John Nemeth wrote:

> On Apr 20, 10:58pm, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> } I agree that distributed options won't be available right after boot, but
> } that doesn't mean that module-based authenticators won't work. :-) I'm
> } thinking of a card-based authenticator, like I think smartcard type
> } things (where you type in a pin and the number from the card).
>
>      Don't these sorts of things often have their own daemons (i.e.
> will they work without any processes besides init running and without
> any kind of initialisation)?

Not sure. I'd assume they would, but they might not. If they need daemons,
then it won't work.

> } While I agree the need for such things won't be common, the places where
> } they will be needed will probably have a hard requirement. So if we can,
> } being able to add modules to an otherwise static init would be nice.
>
>      Personally, I would like to see option 2 (static programs being
> able to use dlopen()).  That sounds like the most complete and correct
> solution to me.  And, it would certainly solve this problem (i.e. init
> would be statically linked, but it could pull in an authentication
> module if really needed).  It also makes the system recovery problem go
> away.  However, I expect based on what I have seen so far, we'll be
> going to full dynamic linking.

From what I gather, adding dlopen() to static will cause lots of problems
as the ELF spec doesn't like it. So unfortunatly it's not really an
option. :-(

Take care,

Bill