Re: [9fans] Ephase question.

[rog@vitanuova.com]

> My biggest headache has been replacing running binaries.  Since we
> can't remove them or overwrite them without disasterous consequences,
> we end up with a 'safeinstall' option in all our mkfiles.  The safeinstall
> moves the file to an unlikely name (e.g. x -> _x) and copies in the
> new file.  Of course, since we have dozens of machines all running off
> the same file system,  something is probably running off the _x that
> was there.  So we sometimes have to move _x to __x, etc.  It's a
> royal pain.  We often forget and just install with the result that
> someone an hour after the fact in some other part of the building
> sends you a snap or pointer to a broken process.  Since I don't have
> to implement the fs, I'ld have preferred the Unix semantics in this
> case.  It's caused me a lot of inconvenience over the last 10+ years.

i was going to mention this, but you did it for me.

would it be too nasty to make the fileserver refuse writes
on files that are currenty open with OEXEC?

that would alleviate somewhat the most common (and hard to find)
problem: overwriting a running binary.
(which can also be a problem for shellscripts, note)

  rog.