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From: urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: 2.0.1 update error
Message-ID: <-2.++F-@smurf.sub.org>
Date: 27 Apr 91 03:53:58 GMT
References: <1991Apr19.191312.3785@athena.mit.edu> <1991Apr24.053159.27641@panix.uucp> <27342@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG
Lines: 27

In comp.unix.aux, article <27342@hydra.gatech.EDU>,
  ken@dali.gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii) writes:
< 
< Anyone who does an upgrade like this on a live system deserves
< anything and everything they get.  It's not "obnoxious", it's the way
< shared libs work (you might try and figure it out some time).  
< 
Yes, but.

The "but" is the fact that BSD unix manages to open programs like any other
file, i.e. it's just an open file. Under any reasonable Unix, you can delete
a "normal" open file just fine and it will vanish if the last process that
has it open closes it.

I don't know the reason for making open demand-paged programs (and shared
libraries) a special case where the usual Unix semantics suddenly don't
apply, but it seems to me that it can't possibly be a very good one.


As for installing on top of a running system: Not everybody has enough free
space (remember sash doesn't have compress, and I don't think pipes work).
Myself, I had to pull the upgrade from another machine via NFS for exactly
this reason. Sash can't do that either.

-- 
Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de     /(o\
Humboldtstrasse 7 - 7500 Karlsruhe 1 - FRG -- +49-721-621127(0700-2330)   \o)/