Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 09:45:53 -0700 From: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@acm.org> To: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> Subject: Re: Making a dynamically-linked root Message-ID: <3EDCD0C1.1020300@acm.org> References: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0306031123461.13279-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk>
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Jan Grant wrote: > On Mon, 2 Jun 2003, Tim Kientzle wrote: >>Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: >>>Was /bin/sh dynamically linked? It shouldn't be. >> >>Sorry, but /bin/sh calls 'getpwnam()', which means >>/bin/sh should use NSS, and thus needs to be >>dynamically linked. > > I don't think this reasoning is completely sound. A functional (but > minimalist) static /bin/sh (or /sbin/sh) will still let you run > /usr/local/bells-and-whistles/sh if you need ~user. My reasoning is correct. The point here is that /bin/sh is not minimalist, as evidenced by the fact that it calls getpwnam(). (Yes, this implies that 'ps', 'ls', 'date', and even 'cat' are not "minimalist," either, since they require pluggable library features.) If you want to remove features from /bin/sh to make it truly minimal, or add a new static shell to the base system, that's a different issue. The current /bin/sh must be dynamically linked because it relies on NSS. Tim P.S. I personally doubt that a static /bin/sh would actually impact the boot performance much at all.
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