On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 03:00:05PM -0400, James Carlson wrote: > At least to me, one of the basic questions is: what the heck can the > administrator realistically do when the archive is out of date? > > It is it at all plausible that someone might fix this problem by some > means that do not include just "bootadm update-archive"? If so, then > what exactly is that scenario? Or is it ever possible that someone > might want to continue running despite the obvious problem? Again, if > so, why? > > If there are no realistic cases where the user can do anything but > update the archive based on the current disk contents, then this looks > to me like the same sort of "please hang up and dial 1" annoyance > features that we ought to be avoiding. > > Especially so given the annoying regularity of the problem ... >
+1 There could be times where updating the archive won't be feasible because, say, a driver needed for mounting / needs to be updated to match a firmware update, and a panic occurs before the archive update -- if the driver and firmware have to be updated together then you have a brick. To fix this should require using a recovery CD or net boot. More complex cases might involve heavy hacking on /etc/system vis-a-vis the root filesystem. You'd be on your own then though. So if boot archive update can complete at boot time then that's the thing to do. The system should probably then reboot again. Nico --
