/bin/e, /bin/ed, /bin/red
Lyndon Nerenberg
lyndon at cs.AthabascaU.CA
Wed Jan 3 18:16:27 AEST 1990
>/bin/e, /bin/ed and /bin/red are all the same. I know
>that they're not very big.
>But, they are on the root (small) file system. This seems bad.
>How about it, Ultrix team?
Others have already pointed out that the three files are actually
one through the magic of links, etc., however nobody answered
the question :-)
The reason /bin/ed is on the root filesystem is to allow system
administrators with fat fingers and leaking cranial cavaties to
repair broken files (such as /etc/rc*, /etc/fstab, ...) that
prevent machines from booting properly. If ed were in /usr, and
/usr wasn't mounted, and /etc/fstab was broken, things would get
ugly.
[ You could use cat. I prefer /bin/emacs :-) ]
[[ I will NOT tell you how MY decade started. Suffice to say I like
/bin/ed right where it is! ]]
[[[ I will also NOT flame about how default sizes for root filesystems
are totally silly. Blame that one on Berkeley, I guess. If there was
one feature I wished DEC and Sun hadn't picked up, though ... ]]]
--
Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
{alberta,decwrl}!atha!lyndon || lyndon at cs.AthabascaU.CA
UREP: Peru in disguise?
More information about the Comp.unix.ultrix
mailing list