Re: [Exim] Exim install script

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Sheldon Hearn
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] Exim install script
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Sheldon Hearn wrote:

> Well, if you don't like them, that's a point against them, but they're
> ideal for this kind of thing, where an atomic update is highly
> desirable.


But symbolic links can do the atomic update, so I don't see that as an
overriding reason. I just feel that more people will be confused by hard
links as a concept, compared with versioned names and a moveable "this
one is current" pointer.

I could always be wrong, of course! (And _real_ newbies don't even know
about soft links. For myself, I always alias "ls" to "ls -F" so I know
what kinds of thing I'm looking at. Perhaps this is what has moulded my
views.)

Let's see if anybody comes in on this thread...

> Alternatively, just make shutting Exim down an upgrade requirement. :-)


It is quite hard to "shut Exim down" completely. About the only way that
works is

kill `cat /var/spool/exim/daemon-pid`
rm /usr/sbin/sendmail

which is not anything I'd recommend.

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.