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Aucbvax.2745 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Tue Aug 18 20:13:42 1981 links and lox, more of the same >From RAM@MIT-MC Tue Aug 18 20:08:15 1981

"like remembering to put something in /etc/rc"

I am on the side of those who say such solutions are tolerable, but there is another trap, namely remembering to take them out. /etc/ttys is another such instance, perhaps more rigidly embedded in unix than "tricks" in rc. In particular on more than one occasion (alas too far separated in time to have had immediate recall of the solution!) I have taken a tty driver out of a kernel but neglected to remove the special files and worse, the /etc/ttys entries, so that nothing bad shows up when I come up single user, because nothing touches the devices (or rather non-devices), but when init starts reading /etc/ttys my system disk goes bananas and it is hard to get even logged in, let alone shoot down init ...

In summary, table driven software is fine as long as the tables are correct. But it can be annoying to make it robust. --bob morris

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