Re: how to make Debian less fragile (long and philosophical)

[Steve Lamb <morpheus@rpglink.com>]

Wednesday, August 18, 1999, 10:33:20 AM, Marek wrote:
> PLEASE! READ AGAIN THE ENTIRE THREAD! Nobody says you will be using these
> utilities ALL THE TIME. THey will be there just in case of failure. Two
> propositions were made:

> 1. emergency shell sets PATH=/bin/static:$PATH
> 2. emergency shell aliases, e.g. 'alias ls=/bin/ls.static'

> Now, where's the problem?

    Emergency shell = sash, statically linked, has all those commands built
in.  THAT'S WHERE THE PROBLEM IS.  DEBIAN ALREADY HAS IT BUT YOU AND EVERYONE
ELSE HAS THEIR HEAD SO FAR UP YOUR COLLECTIVE ASSES YOU DON'T WANT TO READ
THAT!!!!!

    There, did that make it clear enough for you?  Maybe this will.

DESCRIPTION
       The  sash  program  is a stand-alone shell which is useful
       for recovering from certain types of system failures.   In
       particular, it was created in order to cope with the prob­
       lem of missing shared libraries.  You can also use sash to
       safely upgrade to new versions of the shared libraries.

       Sash  can  execute  external  programs,  as  in any shell.
       There are no restrictions on these commands, as the  stan­
       dard  shell is used to execute them if there are any meta-
       characters in the command.

       More importantly, however, is that many  of  the  standard
       system commands are built-in to sash.  These built-in com­
       mands are:

            -chgrp, -chmod, -chown, -cmp, -cp, -dd, -echo,
            -ed, -grep, -gunzip, -gzip, -kill, -ln, -ls, -mkdir,
            -mknod, -more, -mount, -mv, -printenv, -pwd, -rm,
            -rmdir, -sync, -tar, -touch, -umount, -where

       These commands are generally similar to the standard  pro­
       grams  with  similar names.  However, they are simpler and
       cruder than the external programs,  and  so  many  of  the
       options  are  not  implemented.  The restrictions for each
       built-in command are described later.

       The built-in commands which correspond  to  external  pro­
       grams  begin with a dash character in order to distinguish
       them from the external  programs.   So  typing  "ls",  for
       example,  will  attempt  to  run  the real ls program.  If
       "-ls" is typed, then the built-in command which mimics  ls
       is called.


    You want disaster recovery, INSTALL SASH!!!  Geez!


-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------