Hi Jonathan,
There's at least one problem: if you do an *upgrade* of your system the
copy of the new /bsd binary will fail.
BR,
Stijn
Jonathan Thornburg wrote:
When following -stable, my practice is to name each kernel according
to the current date, then have /bsd, /bsd.ok, /bsd.old, and /bsd.release
be symlinks to the appropriate files. (/bsd is the kernel for normal
system operation; /bsd.ok or /bsd.old are backups in case something goes
wrong with a newly-installed kernel.)
Thus, for example, the kernels in the root directory of my laptop right
now are:
# cd /
# ls -lF bsd*
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 24 Mar 7 17:56 bsd@ -> bsd.4.2-stable.2008mar07
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 6229740 Oct 10 16:14 bsd.4.2-release
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6229740 Dec 7 14:30 bsd.4.2-stable.2007dec07*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6229772 Nov 7 18:04 bsd.4.2-stable.2007nov07*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6229772 Nov 17 10:42 bsd.4.2-stable.2007nov17*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6229804 Feb 6 13:17 bsd.4.2-stable.2008feb06*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6229804 Feb 14 20:51 bsd.4.2-stable.2008feb13*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6229740 Mar 7 17:01 bsd.4.2-stable.2008mar07*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 6277122 Oct 10 16:14 bsd.mp
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 24 Feb 14 20:54 bsd.ok@ ->
bsd.4.2-stable.2008feb13
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 24 Dec 8 14:18 bsd.old@ ->
bsd.4.2-stable.2007dec07
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 5068775 Oct 10 16:14 bsd.rd
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15 Dec 8 14:18 bsd.release@ -> bsd.4.2-release
#
(I could delete some of the older kernels, but in practice they don't
take enough disk space to be a problem, so I don't bother. I normally
do a fresh install with each new release, so that limits the cruft to
at most 6 months anyway.)
My question is, assuming I keep my root partition suitably close to
the beginning of the disk (as per FAQ 14.7), is there any problem with
having /bsd be a symlink pointing to another file in the root partition?
If the answer is arch-dependent, I'm using i386, though I'm still
interested in the situation for other architectures too.
I have been using symlinks this way for some years (I'm sure back to
OpenBSD 3.3, and maybe back as far as 2.8 or so) and have not had any
problems. On the other hand, I haven't found any statement in 'man boot'
or the FAQ about symlinks being ok, so a confirmation that it's ok
(or a heads-up if there be daemons lurking) would be welcome.
thanks,
