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From: adh@cstvax.UUCP (Adam Hamilton)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Why do ps, uptime (& probably others) check vmunix version?
Message-ID: <66@cstvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Feb-86 18:38:51 EST
Article-I.D.: cstvax.66
Posted: Tue Feb 25 18:38:51 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 04:16:44 EST
References: <457@ur-helheim.UUCP> <6773@boring.UUCP> <415@ncr-sd.UUCP>
Reply-To: adh@cstvax.UUCP (Adam Hamilton)
Organization: Comp. Sc., Edinburgh Univ., Scotland
Lines: 15

In article <415@ncr-sd.UUCP> greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel) writes:
>In article <6773@boring.UUCP> jack@mcvax.UUCP (Jack Jansen) writes:
>>Something I was thinking of is teaching the boot program about symbolic
>>links. That way, you can have /vmunix.1, /vmunix.2, etc.
>>Now, as soon as the system comes up, some program, probably /etc/init,
>>will setup a symbolic link from the currently running unix to /vmunix.
>
>Why a symbolic link?  Why not a hard link?  We did this for a System V
>port we were doing; it worked just fine.  It searched the files given
>...............

Our System V does a "uname" to get the version then links this file in
/etc/namelists to /unix.  It's VERY convenient in a development
environment and when new base versions arrive. And all you have to do
is keep the version numbers unique :-)