Re: how to make Debian less fragile (long and philosophical)

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Tue, Aug 17, 1999 at 09:12:21PM +0200, Marek Habersack wrote:
> > i have nothing against the idea of having some statically linked
> > binaries in /bin or /sbin or wherever - but i don't think it will
> > do much (if anything) to increase debian's robustness. in my
> > experience, it is not necessary.
>
> Well, you were lucky then and you are probably working on your own. I
> had accidents of people erasing some "unnecessary and bloating" stuff
> from /lib - and these things HAPPEN, believe me. So, I think such
> utilities are really useful.

nope, not particularly lucky and not working on my own. my assistants
are indoctrinated with my nearly-obsessive caution and learn that they
*MUST* live by the motto "always leave yourself a way to back out of any
change" - it's part of my job as systems admin to set the standards of
HOW certain tasks are to be performed.

> I use it all the time on production systems - and I cannot complain
> :)), it works just fine :).

me too. i run 'unstable' because 99.99% of the time it is at least as
reliable as 'stable' and far more up to date. occasionally there are
weird problems which need manual intervention to fix - i accept that
as the price of running up-to-date software with the latest bug and
security fixes.


> If nobody steps up and volunteers to modify the relevant packages to
> support what was discussed in this thread - then I'll be glad to do
> it.

good. the implicit point of my message was that this entire long thread
could have been avoided if someone who cared had bothered to post a
single message with the subject "ITP: static bins". discussion would
then have centred on which binaries to include and where to put them,
rather than trading of unix admin disaster-stories from all sides which
serve only to prove the self-evident: that sometimes static bins help
and sometimes they don't.

craig

--
craig sanders