Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 06 Mar 2001 23:55:28 -0700
From:      Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Cc:        rjesup@wgate.com, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>, josb@cncdsl.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: DJBDNS vs. BIND
Message-ID:  <3AA5DB60.86A5C03D@softweyr.com>
References:  <200103062353.QAA02845@usr05.primenet.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Terry Lambert wrote:
> 
> The reductio ad absurdum of putting things in text files for fear
> of binary file corruption not being as recoverable as text, is to
> store the kernel itself as text, in order to make it recoverable,
> since a binary file is "too hard to recover".

Except the system rarely crashes in the middle of updating the kernel,
even with Edge on the system.

> I think people are using "binary file recovery is hard" as code
> for "I didn't do backups, and humans can at least salvage some
> data from a corrupt text file, if it's not too corrupt".
> 
> [...]
> 
> I don't see text files as being any safer than binary, except in
> the case of human recovery in the absence of a backup.

That was precisely the point.

> I would argue that human recovery is not a useful scenario, even
> in the absence of a backup.

Which flies in the face of every system recovery ever attempted, including
the one I got to do last week.  Even if you just finished a full backup
of the system when it crashed/got killed, some files may be out of date.

-- 
            "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"

Wes Peters                                                         Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com                                           http://softweyr.com/

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3AA5DB60.86A5C03D>