> The first question is, is sash enough? It doesn't include dpkg or > apt-get's functionality, in particular. Is that really worthwhile > though? What sort of failure modes are there that a statically > linked dpkg/apt would help with that are actually plausible. I > assume minimising downtime for people who type "rm /lib/*" isn't a > particularly high priority (whereas minimising downtime due to bash > being removed by apt is much more reasonable).
Both dpkg and APT have a wack of external dependencies. To fully use dpkg you need a working sh, rm, tar, gzip, libc6, dpkg-deb, find, libdpkg. APT requires dpkg, libapt-pkg, libc6 and libstdc++. When a maintainer messes up (like for bash) you can recover using: dpkg-deb -x /var/cache/apt/archives/bash*.deb / dpkg -i /var/cacahe/apt/archives/basin*.deb The only absolutely critical, must not screw up packages are: libc6 gzip tar dpkg You loose any of those and you need a boot disk. Jason
