/bin/e, /bin/ed, /bin/red

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

>/bin/e, /bin/ed and /bin/red are all the same.  I know
>that they're not very big.

>But, they are on the root (small) file system.  This seems bad.
>How about it, Ultrix team?

Others have already pointed out that the three files are actually
one through the magic of links, etc., however nobody answered
the question :-)

The reason /bin/ed is on the root filesystem is to allow system
administrators with fat fingers and leaking cranial cavaties to
repair broken files (such as /etc/rc*, /etc/fstab, ...) that
prevent machines from booting properly. If ed were in /usr, and
/usr wasn't mounted, and /etc/fstab was broken, things would get
ugly.

[ You could use cat. I prefer /bin/emacs :-) ]

[[ I will NOT tell you how MY decade started. Suffice to say I like
/bin/ed right where it is! ]]

[[[ I will also NOT flame about how default sizes for root filesystems
are totally silly. Blame that one on Berkeley, I guess. If there was
one feature I wished DEC and Sun hadn't picked up, though ... ]]]

-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
     {alberta,decwrl}!atha!lyndon || lyndon at cs.AthabascaU.CA

                     UREP: Peru in disguise?