Christian Schwarz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > However, managing /bin/sh through alternatives sounds like a good > > idea to me.
Ian wrote: >Be careful; I'm not sure whether update-alternatives guarantees always >to have one link present. This needs to be looked at _very_ >carefully. We must not allow the system to pass even momentarily >though a state where /bin/sh does not exist. AFAICT, update-alternatives wouldn't change /bin/sh at all, only /etc/alternatives/sh (or whatever's used), but it -does- seem to be careful to create a new symlink /etc/alternatives/sh.dpkg-tmp and rename it to /etc/alternatives/sh after that's succeeded. More critical, I think, is making sure that calls to update-alternatives only occur at the correct times in the shells' maintainer scripts. Incidentally, one way to ensure that there's always a /bin/sh installed, even when bash isn't essential, would be to have all the editors "Provide: posix-sh" and have another essential package depend on posix-sh. Preferably the chosen package would be one that actually uses sh... sysvinit for example. A lot of base packages could probably be made non-essential this way... -- Charles Briscoe-Smith White pages entry, with PGP key: <URL:http://alethea.ukc.ac.uk/wp?95cpb4> PGP public keyprint: 74 68 AB 2E 1C 60 22 94 B8 21 2D 01 DE 66 13 E2
