Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ukma!uflorida!codas!cpsc6a!atl2!akgua!mtunx!whuts!homxb!ho95e!wcs
From: wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart.<ho95c>)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Wiping out /bin in OS upgrades
Message-ID: <2083@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Date: 27 Mar 88 20:07:48 GMT
References: <1904@epimass.EPI.COM> <2662@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <1682@desint.UUCP> <1007@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <46626@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: wcs@ho95e.UUCP (46323-Bill.Stewart.<ho95c>,2G218,x0705,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs 46133, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 19

For tools that are genuinely useful to root, I prefer to keep them in /bin.
That way they're accessible even when /usr isn't mounted, or when other
things go wrong.  For instance, Korn Shell is /bin/ksh; if I used perl,
it would be  /bin/perl (I prefer sed and awk.)  In general, tools that
get used constantly, and aren't very large, go in /bin.  Any upgrade
procedure that trashes commands it doesn't use is *wrong*.

One of the worst offenders is DEC's install scripts for their System V
disk drivers, which typically look like
	mv /etc/foo /etc/foo.orig
	cp /dec/foo /etc
If everything works right the first time (fat chance) you're ok.  If
the install doesn't complete, and you run the script again, it copies
the new /etc/foo over /etc/foo.orig, trashing the original.
-- 
#				Thanks;
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs
# So we got out our parsers and debuggers and lexical analyzers and various 
# implements of destruction and went off to clean up the tty driver...