Date: Thu, 07 Dec 1995 16:54:53 -0600 From: John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ****HELP***** Message-ID: <199512072254.QAA01033@complete.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Dec 1995 16:20:09 MST." <199512062320.QAA19749@intele.net>
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> Obviously not very experienced with UNIX. If any of the programs > you are attempting to overwrite happen to be running, you won't be > able to open them for writing, even as root. You'll obtain EBUSY Why would they be running if you boot of the install floppy? > (text file busy). What you have to do is unlink the file (it won't > really be reclaimed until closed, i.e. the program exits) and then > create the new file with the same name. This, of course, leaves > you with a small window of vulnerability where /bin/sh (and so > forth) does not exist! It also has the side effect of fragging > your disk badly. This is one of the many reasons most UNIX updates > are done off-line, in single user mode, or booted from an alternate > kernel ala Sun's miniroot. It would seem to me that to overwrite a file _should_ make the change in-place, that is, without having to delete, recreate, etc. At least, that's what DOS and OS/2 do, and I wonder why FreeBSD would be worse? -- John -- John Goerzen, programmer and owner | MICRO$oft only exists because some Communications Centre & Complete BBS | people are too dumb to get something E-mail jgoerzen@complete.org | better, such as FreeBSD.
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