*BSD News Article 40988


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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!jkh
From: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: What is the /stand directory?
Date: 18 Jan 1995 01:17:20 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <3fhq70$cn6@agate.berkeley.edu>
References: <3f890vINN1f2@anvil.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca> <3fcht6$dac@sundog.tiac.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu

In article <3fcht6$dac@sundog.tiac.net>,
Richard E. Nickle <rick@vox.trystero.com> wrote:
>Well, I hadn't noticed this before, but thanks for pointing
>it out.  Strictly guesswork (but I'm right, I just know it!)
>There's 55 links in there to the same massive binary, that
>can take advantage of argv[0] to know what the executor intended
>in order to know what to do.

This is correct.

>So, that implies they did it this way because:
>
>	They didn't want the 'stand' binaries to be dynamically
>	linked (no /usr/lib directory in single-user mode).
>
>And maybe these reasons (which seem weird to me, but maybe someone
>can elaborate)

No, actually we did it this way because we didn't have much space on the
boot floppy that lays them down, and this only links in the libraries
ONCE.  It's a space-saving trick, nothing more (see /usr/src/usr.sbin/crunch).

					Jordan