On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 10:40:27AM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, David Maxwell wrote:
> 
> > Many tools on the boot floppy have #defines that cause them to build
> > with a more limited functionality, and to save space. Yes, that means
> > maintaining two 'targets' to build from those sources, but each has a
> > different set of requirements driving it. Likewise, here, /rescue isn't
> > used often, just when you need it, and its binaries are different from
> > the system as a whole, for a very good reason.
> 
> I'm willing to bet people will not find the problems in /rescue until the
> time they really need it, and by then, it's a bit late, don't you think?

When was the last time you ran mknod? Are you _sure_ you have a good
copy of it? Good heavens, what if it developes a bad block on the HD,
and mknod dies every time you try to run it... You might have to resort
to (Horror!) a... boot floppy. eeek! (Thinking of the Solaris rm
/dev/zero and reboot case)

Previously, updating /bin and /sbin was part of an upgrade cycle. Now,
updating /rescue is part of the cycle (well, doesn't have to be, if you
choose to keep boot media around instead).

Saying 'X isn't used much, so if X gets broken we wouldn't notice until
we need X, and then it would be a pain' is about as meaningful as saying
'My Windows box needs to be rebooted twice a day, so I always will find
out about boot problems within 12 hours. NetBSD is worse, since it might
stay up for years, not being able to reboot, and I wouldn't know!'

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net -->
Any sufficiently advanced Common Sense will seem like magic... 
					      - me