[6034] in Athena Bugs
Re: why does xlogin touch the kernel?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Basch)
Fri Sep 14 08:35:02 1990
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 90 08:34:41 -0400
To: jfc@MIT.EDU
Cc: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
From: Richard Basch <probe@MIT.EDU>
[6031] daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Athena Bugs 09/14/90 01:49 (16 lines)
Subject: why does xlogin touch the kernel?
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 90 01:49:15 EDT
From: John Carr <jfc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
I ran xlogin manually and this message was printed:
Unable find all the symbols in /vmunix.
Invoking xlogin should not require that vmunix be readable, writeable, or the
boot kernel. This looks like a message printed by the 6.4->7.0 update kernel
patcher. Xlogin should not touch the configuration or kernel except when run
from init or toehold on a public workstation which needs an update
(/srvd/auto_update should exit immediately on finding $PUBLIC or $AUTOUPDATE
false).
--[6031]--
Your analysis is incomplete... this hack is for 6.4 machines using 7.1
packs (6.4 is still somewhat supported). As soon as 6.4 support is
dropped, the hack will be removed from xlogin (which calls
/usr/athena/lib/update/sys_patch). Under 6.4, there was no hook to
update the syscall table, and xlogin would hang without the invocation
of this program.
In other words, this "bug" is actually a backwards-compatibility feature
that needs to stay around for a while...
-Richard
