Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:10:43 +1000 From: Peter Jeremy <PeterJeremy@optushome.com.au> To: "Adam C. Migus" <adam@migus.org> Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Things to remove from /rescue Message-ID: <20030901091043.GA87897@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> In-Reply-To: <51381.192.168.4.2.1062397532.squirrel@mail.migus.org> References: <20030722153056.GM863@starjuice.net> <200307231042.29371.alex.neyman@auriga.ru> <51381.192.168.4.2.1062397532.squirrel@mail.migus.org>
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On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 02:25:32AM -0400, Adam C. Migus wrote: >The whole change to dynamic linking for / is a move to "modernize" >FreeBSD. Thus /rescue is a "modern" attempt at creating a /stand. >If we're going to be "modern" we ought to think about what "modern" >sysadmins need to "rescue" their systems. What do you mean by a "modern" sysadmin? Do you mean people who believe everything should be done via a GUI and would be lost if presented with a shell prompt? >/rescue to me implies "what's needed to rescue you're hosed FreeBSD >system." Actually /rescue is only needed when you've managed to hose your /lib, /bin or /sbin directories. If you haven't damaged your root filesystem, you can use all the utilities in /bin and /sbin. If your root is totally hosed, you need to boot from alternate media (eg a fixit CD-ROM). Excluding hamfisted sysadmins pointing "rm" at the wrong directory, /rescue is probably going to be of most use to developers who have managed to a "make world" at an inopportune time and installed a non-functional ld.so or similar. >Finally, this argument essentially comes down to space savings vs. >ability to rescue the system. Is 100K of disk space worth 2 hours >of time due to a missing tool? Any missing tool is probably available on the fixit CD-ROM. >Why not make the set of tools in /rescue easily configurable and >divide them into three sets: > >1. Those that are in the crunch and linked in /rescue, >2. Those that are in the crunch but aren't linked in /rescue, and >3. Those that aren't yet in the crunch. > >The first being tools everyone agrees are valuable, the second being >tools that at least one person thinks might be useful (not in excess >of what's there now), the last being tools everyone can agree are >useless (and thus aren't there now). There doesn't seem to be any reason for the second category. The prime driver for /rescue is size. Once you've included a utility within the crunch, you've taken the size hit so you might as well include the link. >That way if an administrator complains about a missing tool someone >said might be useful, the answer is "just create a link." And the administrator has a whinge about the #$@!%@* idiots who made him waste hours waiting for a response to his e-mail when they could have created the link to start with. This doesn't strike me as being of benefit to anyone. Peterhome | help
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