prelink should not mess with running executables

[Jan Kratochvil]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 16:19:23 +0200, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> It took me a while to figure out why my daemon kept breaking all the
> time, when it couldn't stat its /proc/self/exe any more.

This is a bug of the daemon.  While it is already suspicious it needs to mess
with "/proc/self/exe" stat works for it even when it is already deleted:
	cp /usr/bin/perl /tmp/perlcopy;/tmp/perlcopy -MData::Dumper -le 'unlink "/tmp/perlcopy";print Dumper stat,readlink for "/proc/self/exe"'
	$VAR1 = 18;
	[...]
	$VAR13 = 32;
	$VAR14 = '/tmp/perlcopy (deleted)';


On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 16:43:13 +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
> it should be generally considered if prelink is useful at
> all on a distribution with high frequently updates

This is a bug of yum, it should run prelink for any updated software.


> and in the context of intrusion detections which are randomly broken by the
> prelink cronjob

This is a bug of the intrusion detections software which should run documented
way:
	prelink -u -o - /bin/bash | read the original binary


> also the prelink-cronjob itself eats more ressources
> a the whole benefit is especially if it starts on
> a notebook with slow disks while people want to work

This is a bug of cron, this problem affects me also for nightly updates and
nightly build and regression testing jobs.


> in my machines are all free from prelink

This is a workaround, not a fix.


Regards,
Jan