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From: ggm@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (George Michaelson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: SunOS vs. Ultrix comparison
Keywords: SunOS shareable libraries
Message-ID: <1991Jan24.222104.2811@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au>
Date: 24 Jan 91 22:21:04 GMT
References: <8012@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Jan24.074910.6738@pa.dec.com> <1991Jan24.102601@wsl.dec.com> <518@decvax.decvax.dec.com.UUCP>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Prentice Computer Centre, The University of Queensland, Australia.
Lines: 28


Shared libs on suns are a bit of a two edged sword. If you install
code compiled against a newer libc.so you don't stand much chance
of getting it to work. As long as there are major upgrade steps
in motion, multiple releases in the field and different dates for
release of code across the planet, taking s/w off the network from
far away is a bummer. I might point out I am still using Ultrix 3.1D
so I find all this discussion a bit academic... 

Secondly, dumb mistakes can smash the system completely. I think
Sun should be more careful about making a subset of the commands
statically linked so you dont loose ls ldconfig cat mv tar etc when
you barf over libc. Perhaps I misunderstand what should be done in
these cases, but based on smashing libc on a SunOS 4.1 3/60 earlier this
year, I know of no way to recover other than reloading MUNIX or the
miniroot onto swap and pulling code off the tapes. If you have 3rd
party drives this can get interesting (does the miniunix understand
*your* flavour of SCSI?)

Lastly, It seems very odd that DEC didn't do this much earlier. 
Are shared libs really that hard to do?  

	-George
-- 
	G.Michaelson
Internet: G.Michaelson@cc.uq.oz.au                     Phone: +61 7 365 4079
  Postal: George Michaelson, the Prentice Centre,
          The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD Australia 4072.