> On Fri, 30 Aug 2002, Richard Earnshaw wrote:
> 
> > > If you don't agree that a single point of failure makes things less safe
> > > I'm sure NASA would be interested in hearing about your deductive
> > > skills. :-)
> > 
> > What makes you think that having lots of separate programs, each of which 
> > does different things and cannot represent the functionality of another 
> > isn't a single point of failure?
> 
> Let me see...
> echo *
> 
> Hmmm, sure looks like that could be somewhat equivalent to ls...

... a lot of pointless trivial examples

/sbin/init: bad sector

Hmm, don't seem to have a replacement for that one....

fsck, ifconfig, mknod, badsect, ...

I could go on.

If you've got a hosed system then there are MANY critical tools which are 
likely unusable.

> > As has been pointed out.  If you are worried about things like that. Then 
> > install several /rescue directories.  Better still, do that on several 
> > different disks, and arrange your system so that you can boot from any of 
> > them in an emergency.
> 
> That is also an option. But /rescue is rather vulnerable, plus I probably
> don't even know if it works until the day I'm going to use it.
> 

So run some tests on it.  You are capable of doing that I suppose, you do 
know the root password after all.

R.