Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!aglew%fang@gswd-vms.Gould.COM
From: aglew%fang@gswd-vms.Gould.COM (Andy Glew)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Jerry Pournelle on UNIX (From BY
Message-ID: <11195@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 9 Jan 88 20:21:55 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 34

..> / in ROM

Barry Shein (paraphrased) says that he cannot see the advantage of
having / be symlinks to stuff on ROMdisk -- because, since / is still
writable, the advantage of not being able to trash a ROMdisk / is
lost. (Please correct me if I've misunderstood).

Consider, though, that the probability of hardware errors is usually
proportional to the amount of space occupied.

The system I'm on right now has a 16M /. It has 1406 inodes used.
Now, if this / consisted only of 1K symlinks, it would occupy just about
2M. So the chances of a hardware error trashing / have been decreased
8 times!

Of course, some types of software errors are proprtional to the volume
of the namespace, not the volume of the objects named; so the chance
of this error hasn't been changed; eg. rm /*. However, software errors
that result in writing *into* rather than *onto* files have been
eliminated.

And, if the default image of the symlinks is in ROM, and can be loaded as
if from scratch and then repatched...


Andy "Krazy" Glew. Gould CSD-Urbana.    1101 E. University, Urbana, IL 61801   
    aglew@gould.com     	- preferred, if you have nameserver
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My opinions are my own, and are not the opinions of my employer, or any
other organisation. I indicate my company only so that the reader may
account for any possible bias I may have towards our products.