[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI ksh 93t+ needs an update to 93u+

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 25 May 2016, cpforum wrote:

>
>> Isn't ksh93 the Illumos primary shell? Illumos would not boot without it?
>
> Yes ksh is the main shell of illumos. For example, most of the svc services have a #!/sbin/sh as first line and
> /sbin/sh --version display ksh93t+. In fact /sbin/sh is a symbolic link to ../usr/lib/x86/ksh

ksh93 has many library dependencies (especially libast):

% ldd /sbin/sh
         libshell.so.1 =>         /usr/lib/libshell.so.1
         libc.so.1 =>     /lib/libc.so.1
         libcmd.so.1 =>   /usr/lib/libcmd.so.1
         libdll.so.1 =>   /usr/lib/libdll.so.1
         libast.so.1 =>   /usr/lib/libast.so.1
         libsocket.so.1 =>        /lib/libsocket.so.1
         libm.so.2 =>     /lib/libm.so.2
         libsum.so.1 =>   /usr/lib/libsum.so.1
         libnsl.so.1 =>   /lib/libnsl.so.1
         libmd.so.1 =>    /lib/libmd.so.1
         libmp.so.2 =>    /lib/libmp.so.2

It is my understanding that these dependencies impact implementing 
split off /usr (see "Split-root installations" discussion thread at 
"http://openindiana.org/pipermail/openindiana-discuss/2013-November/thread.html#14418"), 
single-user mode, and some administrative activities.  Historically 
some systems provided a statically linked (or close to it) sh for use 
while booting and in single-user mode in order to limit filesystem 
dependencies.

Replacing the shell is a big deal and requires considerable testing.

A bug with the current Illumos version is that 'rm -f' with no 
arguments returns an error status to the invoker.  This impacts 
Automake-generated Makefiles.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/