Re: CVS update for only one platform

[Erik Fair <fair%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Nov 19, 2011, at 01:46, matthew green wrote:

>> You need to use /rescue/pax too. In fact, just put /rescue in the front of 
>> your PATH.
> 
> pax is linked against the real copy of libc in /lib.  that can't be
> the problem here... 

I was under the impression that the point of /rescue was that every binary in 
it is statically linked, i.e. self-contained. That's certainly how file(1) 
reports the binaries in /rescue on a NetBSD/sparc64 system I have running 
NetBSD 5.

That's why if your shared libraries are borked or gone, you put /rescue in the 
front of your PATH - so that anything you might run to fix the situation is 
statically linked, and thus able to run when the shared libraries are broken.

I have always disliked shared libraries for precisely this reason: step on one, 
and everything linked to it fails. It makes the system more fragile, in the 
name of RAM/working set savings. This is why /rescue exists, full of 
statically-linked utilities.

There is definitely an argument to be made for shared libraries having the 
"system immutable flag" (see chflags(1)) set by default in our distributions to 
make this scenario much less likely.

        Erik <fair%netbsd.org@localhost>