hiya, On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 11:56:02AM +0200, Shaul Karl wrote: > Basically, when one removes a binary file from a UNIX file system, it > is gone - no matter if this binary is currently in use. Therefore, i don't think that's necessarily true. i believe the way it works is that a file is not 'gone' (in the sense of fs de-allocation) until there are no more references to it. so for example, i think if you open a file for reading, and then immediately remove the file, you should still be able to read the entire file, even if it's over a page in size. you could verify this with a simple c-program or perl script where you open the file, then rm it via system(), and then read the data. now i could be wrong (and feel free to correct me if i am), but i think executing the file also counts as a reference to it in some way, so when you delete the file and/or overwrite it with an upgrade, if the program is running in memory it should be just fine and should be able to load in pages that weren't already in memory, but as soon as it exits the file is 'gone'. in the meantime that the program is running, subsequent calls to exec/read that file will get the new file (or fail if it was simply removed). --sean
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