On Thu, 2025-01-23 at 17:17 -0500, John Mellor wrote: > On 2025-01-23 2:51 p.m., Adam Williamson wrote: > > On Thu, 2025-01-23 at 06:00 +0000, George R Goffe via test wrote: > > > . . . > > > > > > 2) Are we forgetting why we have the concept of statically linked binaries? > > What does that have to do with where they are? > > If I may offer some insight: > > In the Unix philosophy, everything in /sbin is statically linked. > Things in /bin may be statically linked, but more normally are dynamic. > The root user PATH normally has /sbin and /usr/sbin before the others, > while normal users have that reversed or even leave /sbin and /usr/sbin > out altogether. This makes a difference when you are trying to recover > a system in the middle of the night. With tools like vi, sed, grep, > mount etc. being statically linked, there are less dependencies required > to get basic recovery tools working, increasing the likelihood that you > can get the system at least partially back up without having to > reinstall and lose mission-critical data. Fedora has never subscribed to this philosophy. Statically-linked binaries are discouraged in the packaging guidelines, without any kind of exception for this purpose: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#_statically_linking_executables none of our packages containing the tools you mentioned, or any others, are statically linked. We're a Linux distribution, not Unix. > At least twice (once on Solaris and once on VMware), I've had to recover > a system with damaged filesystems spread across hundreds of drives and > still meet a 5-nines uptime guarantee. Reinstall is not an option in > these circumstances ever. If you work out the numbers, I think that you > will agree that having standalone tool binaries is far more important > than saving a bit of disk on anything larger than a single-drive desktop. The typical way to recover a Fedora system is with the recovery mode of an installer image, or with a live image. > > That thinking seems to have been lost in Fedora today, resulting in a > less recoverable platform. It's not been "lost in Fedora today"; Fedora has never thought that way. -- Adam Williamson (he/him/his) Fedora QA Fedora Chat: @adamwill:fedora.im | Mastodon: @adamw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx https://www.happyassassin.net -- _______________________________________________ test mailing list -- test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to test-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
