Date: Sat, 25 Apr 1998 12:41:24 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net> To: cschuber@uumail.gov.bc.ca Cc: toor@dyson.iquest.net, peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Static vs. dynamic linking Message-ID: <199804251741.MAA11634@dyson.iquest.net> In-Reply-To: <199804251729.KAA05173@cwsys.cwsent.com> from Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group at "Apr 25, 98 10:29:01 am"
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> > How many of our problems can be fixed in the library(s) alone, > > anyway? > > The current arrangement as we have it, some binaries linked dynamic and > others linked static, is a fairly good arrangement. Can this > arrangement be adjusted or improved? Yes. The two extremes however: > To totally switch to shared libraries (would cause a performance hit) > or to no longer support shared libraries (not mentioned in this > discussion yet but I'm sure some are thinking about this) [both] appear > silly and I'm sure a good compromise (adjustments and tuning) can be > found. > I agree, using *just* applications with shared libs is a bad tradeoff, like using *just* applications with static libs. When you have one shared lib, you are getting alot of overhead right away. I would suggest that it is probably best not to link with 50 shared libs, but with only one vs. 2-3, it is best to go all of the way, and link with all three shared. For things like inetd and other daemons that fork, etc, there is a performance hit. There might be cases where shared libs can making fixing problems easier, but if replacing a shared lib is being used to fix a system call -- on FreeBSD, you can theoretically just fix the system call. I suspect that a good compromise can be worked out, and I just want to make sure that we don't loose (much) performance. I also don't want to loose many of the advantages of having shared libraries. John To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe security" in the body of the message
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