Jonathan Underwood wrote:




You can't just symlink /sbin to /bin, because that will blow up RPM
very badly.



Why's that? Could/should rpm not be fixed?


Yes, anything that doesn't traverse symlinks transparently deserves to
be blown up.


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2008/3/26 Will Woods <wwoods@redhat.com>:

Comments?


What exactly is the criteria by which a specific executable is determined to be movable or not?

-jef

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Will Woods (wwoods@redhat.com) said:
> I actually created a Feature page after a discussion about this on
> #fedora-devel earlier this week:
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SbinSanity
>
> I think it summarizes the problem and (one) proposed solution fairly
> well. Feel free to expand/edit it..
>
> Comments?

Just fix $PATH. It is much much simpler.

Bill

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Once upon a time, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@gmail.com> said:
> Jonathan Underwood wrote:
> >> You can't just symlink /sbin to /bin, because that will blow up RPM
> >> very badly.
> >>
> >
> >Why's that? Could/should rpm not be fixed?
>
> Yes, anything that doesn't traverse symlinks transparently deserves to
> be blown up.

It isn't the traversal that is the problem. The problem is changing an
existing directory to a symlink. For example, what if there are still
files in the directory? Also, IIRC part of the problem was because rpm
installs all the new files and then removes the old ones (so how do you
install the new symlink while the old directory is there with lots of
files).

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I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

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Jonathan Underwood (jonathan.underwood@gmail.com) said:
> > To do a full /sbin -> /bin migration, you'd need to:
> >
> > 1) Rebuild all packages to change paths
> > 2) Maintain a list of things that are commonly referenced by third-party/local
> > scripts by path
> > 3) Build a package that provides those symlinks
>
> Doesn't step 3 render step 2 redundant?

If you want to provide *everything* as a symlink, I suppose. Gets
rather gross rather fast.

> > I fail to see how this is more efficient than just modifying $PATH. (Actually
> > I fail to see what horribly necessary commands are causing this to be a
> > big issue, but that's beside the point.)
> >
> > You can't just symlink /sbin to /bin, because that will blow up RPM
> > very badly.
>
> Why's that?

rpm lays files down in a simple repeatable fashion, for any path /foo/bar/baz:

- write to /foo/bar/baz.$tempname
- rename("/foo/bar/baz.$tempname", "/foo/bar/baz")

This ensures that the path is updated to the new file atomically, which you really
really want.

What happens when /foo/bar/baz is a populated directory is left as an exercise
for the user.

Bill

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On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 11:40 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> seth vidal wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 12:03 -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> >> Jesse Keating (jkeating@redhat.com) said:
> >>>> Why not just change the path rather than litter the world with symlinks?
> >>>>
> >>>> (Also, this is getting offtopic for -desktop rather fast.)
> >>> Bringing it to fedora-devel. The idea is that you'd only be 'littered'
> >>> with symlinks if you install an FHS compat package. Otherwise your
> >>> stuff just lives happily in (/usr)/bin.
> >> But changing the path solves it without having to touch every (including
> >> third-party) packages.
> >
> > But it's not just about the path. It's also about finding it in scripts,
> > among other places.
>
> Why not simplify the world and put everything in /bin and /usr/bin,
> making /sbin and /usr/sbin symlinks for backwards compatibility?
Silly.

> Whatever purpose someone thought the s- versions might have ever served
> flies out the window when the the administrator and the only user are
> one and the same person who is just confused by sometimes having
> commands work and sometimes not.
This proposal is in the same class of proposals proposing to abandon
"user accounts" and/or to use "root only".

Ralf



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Chris Adams wrote:



You can't just symlink /sbin to /bin, because that will blow up RPM
very badly.


Why's that? Could/should rpm not be fixed?
Yes, anything that doesn't traverse symlinks transparently deserves to
be blown up.


It isn't the traversal that is the problem. The problem is changing an
existing directory to a symlink. For example, what if there are still
files in the directory? Also, IIRC part of the problem was because rpm
installs all the new files and then removes the old ones (so how do you
install the new symlink while the old directory is there with lots of
files).


This is something that would be better done starting with a new install.
Otherwise it would have to be in the scripted section of the rpm and
it couldn't be quite atomic to move the old contents and replace the
directory with the link.


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On 26/03/2008, Bill Nottingham <notting@redhat.com> wrote:
> rpm lays files down in a simple repeatable fashion, for any path /foo/bar/baz:
>
> - write to /foo/bar/baz.$tempname
> - rename("/foo/bar/baz.$tempname", "/foo/bar/baz")
>
> This ensures that the path is updated to the new file atomically, which you really
> really want.
>
> What happens when /foo/bar/baz is a populated directory is left as an exercise
> for the user.

Aha, I see. Thanks for the explanation.

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On 26/03/2008, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com> wrote:

> compared to the difficulty of making use of things like route as a user...
> what is the difficulty of editting the .bash_profile manually to extend the
> path?

None whatsoever, which is my preferred solution ) since, oh, about 1991.

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On 26/03/2008, Bill Nottingham <notting@redhat.com> wrote:

> Just fix $PATH. It is much much simpler.
>
>
> Bill

+2

Bill (another one).

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