Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 07:44:16 -0600 From: Bob Willcox <bob@immure.com> To: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@acm.org> Cc: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu> Subject: Re: 40% slowdown with dynamic /bin/sh Message-ID: <20031203134416.GA54427@luke.immure.com> In-Reply-To: <3FCD32DB.4030204@acm.org> References: <200311250106.hAP16qNp018512@realtime.exit.com> <200311251212.59933.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <3FCCF094.5040006@tcoip.com.br> <3FCD0774.60807@acm.org> <20031202221940.GF38911@luke.immure.com> <3FCD32DB.4030204@acm.org>
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On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 04:48:27PM -0800, Tim Kientzle wrote:
> Bob Willcox wrote:
> >
> >What impact, if any, will this have on those of us that use NIS and
> >still want a statically linked root? I have been using NIS for years ...
>
> First, let me clarify that I'm advocating moving NIS out of libc in
> the 6.0 timeframe. Also, I'm not suggesting anyone replace NIS
> with LDAP. FreeBSD currently has a strong bias for NIS over LDAP; I
> just think we should support both equally.
>
> How would this affect a static root?
>
> Make it a lot smaller and faster, for starters. NIS adds
> as much as 400k each to many programs in /bin and /sbin.
> Over a quarter of a static /bin/sh is from NIS support.
>
> Does that rule out NIS with a static root?
>
> Yes, with the current NSS/PAM implementation, although a variety
> of suggestions have been floated around that would make NSS/PAM
> compatible with static binaries. My personal favorite is to
> implement NSS/PAM daemons to satisfy such requests. Such daemons
> are surprisingly simple to implement, in my experience. I'm
> skeptical of efforts to use dlopen() with static binaries; static
> binaries don't have symbol tables, so there's no way to resolve
> references from the dlopen()-ed library back into the executable.
>
> I'm curious, though. The single most convincing argument so far in
> favor of a static root has been performance. Doesn't the NIS network
> overhead swamp any performance gains from static linking? I suspect
> you have other reasons for wanting a static root. (Or do you only
> require certain executables to be static, such as /bin/sh?)
Nothing specific. I suppose it's just a space-time tradeoff from my
point of view. With disk sizes what they are today (most of my systems
have a system disk size of 40 GB or more), in my environment reducing
the root filesystem size just isn't a priority.
Bob
>
> Tim Kientzle
--
Bob Willcox First Law of Procrastination:
bob@immure.com Procrastination shortens the job and places the
Austin, TX responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e.,
the authority who imposed the deadline).
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