Jon Peatfield wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 
>> There is a program called "prelink" that works with the program loader
>> to rewrite the symbol tables in libraries and executables for faster
>> loading.  It is turned on by default in Red Hat derived systems like
>> Scientific Linux.
>>
>> Yikes!
>>
>> I do disk-to-disk backups with dirvish/rsync (I like dirvish so much,
>> I host www.dirvish.org  ;-)  )  and have started doing file integrity
>> monitoring with osiris.  It appears that "prelink" changes the
>> binaries and libaries while leaving ctime/mtime at previous values.
>>
>> Just like a virus does, so prelink sets off all sorts of alarms.
>> Sorry, I would rather have slow, stable and safe instead of fast
>> and fragile, so bye-bye prelink .
> 
> In my (possibly badly distorted) view if prelinking give you anything 
> then any service using a prelinked binary or dynamically linked library 
> should be re-started after each prelink change.
>

(final) linking is done when a program loads. The idea of prelinking is 
to do this beforehand, so loading programs proceeds more quickly.

It provides no benefit at all once a program's up and running. I expect 
it to be most useful in desktop environments, and of least use in 
dedicated database servers.

It's not a new idea; we used to do something similar with IBM's OS in 
the 60s and its early OS/VS successors in the 70s.


-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
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