From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 18 19:27:26 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DA4116A4CE for ; Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:27:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from tinker.exit.com (tinker.exit.com [206.223.0.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D1C743FCB for ; Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:27:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from frank@exit.com) Received: from realtime.exit.com (realtime [206.223.0.5]) by tinker.exit.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id hAJ3RLeC026344 for ; Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:27:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from frank@exit.com) Received: from realtime.exit.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by realtime.exit.com (8.12.10/8.12.9) with ESMTP id hAJ3RLkg087133 for ; Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:27:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from frank@realtime.exit.com) Received: (from frank@localhost) by realtime.exit.com (8.12.10/8.12.9/Submit) id hAJ3RLiB087132 for current@freebsd.org; Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:27:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from frank) From: Frank Mayhar Message-Id: <200311190327.hAJ3RLiB087132@realtime.exit.com> In-Reply-To: <200311190253.hAJ2rAWO001198@dyson.jdyson.com> To: current@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:27:21 -0800 (PST) X-Copyright0: Copyright 2003 Frank Mayhar. All Rights Reserved. X-Copyright1: Permission granted for electronic reproduction as Usenet News or email only. X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL99f (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Subject: Re: Unfortunate dynamic linking for everything X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: frank@exit.com List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 03:27:26 -0000 I just thought I would chime in on this heated debate and maybe add a little gasoline or at least a few oily rags. :-) For what it's worth, I've been running FreeBSD literally since before its inception, when it was merely a collection of patches to 386BSD 0.1. I'm also a longtime kernel guy so I do have a bit of a professional opinion. I tend to think that making the binaries in / dynamic is a bad idea. It is one of those that is floated from time to time, and ends up being voted down, often after someone has to recover a hosed system without having the appropriate shared libraries available. It seems like a good idea on the surface, but I really think it's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation. The amount of space it will save is trivial relative to the size of modern disks and the size of the rest of the distribution. I really don't care that much about how fast the system boots; even if you slowed it to half its current speed it would still be much faster than anything Microsoft has produced. If you're upgrading "security libraries" (or whatever), it's really as easy to upgrade the binaries in /bin and /sbin as it is to replace the libraries. There's just not that much there. Both Matt and John are right. You guys are trying to solve a non-problem. Please don't. There are much better things on which to spend your time. -- Frank Mayhar frank@exit.com http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/ http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/