On Sun, 23 Dec 2001, Martin Husemann wrote:

: > * Do definitely provide a useful set of statically-linked
: >   system-restore utilities, if you're providing a
: >   fully-dynamically-linked system.
:
: Ah, ok, this part was not clear to me from the proposal.
: (Actually I'm quite happy with the set as it is now ;-) )

Again, any system that needs "recovery" tools should probably have a
kernel-with-ramdisk bootable from /.  *That* is your most likely way to
recover from loss of critical system files.  Think of it as a very big
statically linked binary.  8-)

A possible alternative is a special tool fileset, let's call it /recover for
the moment, which contains a crunchgen'd collection of vital system tools.
Among other things, it could contain a copy of init (to be loaded as a
fallback by the kernel), and /bin/sh....

In any case, claiming that /bin and /sbin are the "system recovery" tools is
pretty ludicrous, as those same tools still depend on several critical
files.  The only *real* reason that /bin and /sbin have continued to be
statically linked is because they contain the tools necessary to locate and
mount /usr.  That's all.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi & NetBSD:  Run with it.
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