From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 17 07:23:59 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 85D3316A4CE for ; Mon, 17 Nov 2003 07:23:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from falcon.midgard.homeip.net (h76n3fls24o1048.bredband.comhem.se [213.67.148.76]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5F59343FA3 for ; Mon, 17 Nov 2003 07:23:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ertr1013@student.uu.se) Received: (qmail 63407 invoked by uid 1001); 17 Nov 2003 15:23:56 -0000 Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:23:55 +0100 From: Erik Trulsson To: current@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20031117152355.GA63363@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> Mail-Followup-To: current@freebsd.org, Brent Jones References: <20031116051028.GA30485@roark.gnf.org> <3FB7A44C.1000002@mindspring.com> <1AAE62E6-18A5-11D8-B9A8-000393652EF2@santafe.edu> <20031117042151.GA60088@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> <20031117140020.GB15294@wombat.localnet> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20031117140020.GB15294@wombat.localnet> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i Subject: Re: HEADS UP: /bin and /sbin are now dynamically linked X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:23:59 -0000 On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 09:00:20AM -0500, Michael Edenfield wrote: > * Erik Trulsson [031116 23:21]: > > On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 07:24:00PM -0700, Brent Jones wrote: > > > This is just a case of OS evolution. /sbin used to be the place where > > > the statically linked recovery things would be placed, in case the > > > shared libraries got hosed. The only things that needed to be > > > statically linked though, were system utilities, which is why people > > > probably started to associate the "s" with system, rather than static. > > > > > > When this happened, you started to see the duplicates that used to > > > exist in /bin (or /usr/bin) and /sbin disappear. Since you still need > > > a place to have statically linked recovery utilities, /rescue was > > > created. Now you see the duplicates in /bin (or /usr/bin) and /rescue > > > instead. > > > > Do you have any references for this? Every single place that I can > > find explains /sbin as "system binaries". I have also never heard of > > there ever being duplicates in /bin of the files in /sbin. > > Also, wouldn't the names 'bin' and 'sbin' pre-date the existiance of > dynamically linked binaries? Yeah, that is what I thought too, but it does not seem to to be the case. As far as I can tell (after using Google for quite a bit) shared libraries were first introduced in Unix with SysVR3, with the model currently in use first appearing in SunOS 4 (I have no idea what they looked like in SysVR3.) /sbin seems to have first appeared in SysVR4, which postdates both of the above. /sbin seems to have been introduced to BSD sometime between 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD. (And SysVR4-derived systems seem to have /bin just as a symlink to /usr/bin, with /sbin containing only what is needed to boot the system far enough to mount /usr, with system binaries otherwise appearing in /usr/sbin and normal user binaries in /usr/bin. Solaris does appear to have dynamically linked duplicates in /usr/sbin of the statically linked programs appearing in /sbin.) > AFAIK the primary difference between the > two was the /bin was typically in a user's PATH and /sbin was not. This is apparently one of things that differ between SysV- and BSD- derived systems. -- Erik Trulsson ertr1013@student.uu.se