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If they don’t link libc statically it can become a problem if the system-installed libc is corrupt or incompatible. My Arch install broke once and I wasn’t able

If they don’t link libc statically it can become a problem if the system-installed libc is corrupt or incompatible. My Arch install broke once and I wasn’t able to run pacman to correct it, because the libc installed was not compatible with pacman. If sudo wouldn’t run, I would not even have a chance to repair the install without booting to live cd.

Quekid5 3y ago
I'd invest $10 into a rescue USB stick regardless. I like putting Ventoy on it and having a large number of different distribution ISOs on there, just in case.
Arnavion 3y ago
What distros are there that normally dynamically link everything but statically link sudo? OpenSUSE, Debian and Ubuntu (the distros I have on hand) do not, at least.
- paholg 3y ago
  I just checked on NixOs, and ldd reports sudo is not dynamic.
  - justinsaccount 3y ago
    Did you check the real sudo binary, or the setuid wrapper? On my system sudo is `/run/wrappers/bin/sudo` but that is a setuid wrapper for `/nix/store/z008bzqrl2zc848gjhh04012jhxpl72q-sudo-1.9.15p5/bin/sudo` which is dynamically linked.
    - paholg 3y ago
      Ah, I guess I just checked the wrapper. That's what I get for doing it on my phone over ssh. I would have probably looked deeper with a real keyboard.
dralley 3y ago
If the system-provided libc is corrupt, isn't sudo the least of your concern? What else is going to work?
- gkbrk 3y ago
  > What else is going to work? Everything that was statically compiled.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  A statically-linked busybox, which is often enough.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
Funnily enough something similar happened to me after doing a partial update. Doing a partial update are not supported in arch linux for this very reason. sudo broke as well as many others command. ssh worked for a bit and then segfaulted. I edited my PATH to have a healthy version of libc but things kept breaking in different ways (version mismatches) In the end I had to use a live usb drive as I couldn't write to /usr/lib
rnijveld 3y ago
This only works on Linux of course since the Linux kernel and libc are not tightly coupled, on any other OS dynamically linking against libc is a necessity. Also, I've never seen anyone statically linking against glibc? Is that even something people do? I'd consider your system provided libc being broken is a similar situation to an unbootable kernel: you just need a rescue stick/partition to fix it, or reinstall your OS.

Quekid5 3y ago

I'd invest $10 into a rescue USB stick regardless. I like putting Ventoy on it and having a large number of different distribution ISOs on there, just in case.

Arnavion 3y ago

What distros are there that normally dynamically link everything but statically link sudo? OpenSUSE, Debian and Ubuntu (the distros I have on hand) do not, at least.

paholg 3y ago
I just checked on NixOs, and ldd reports sudo is not dynamic.
- justinsaccount 3y ago
  Did you check the real sudo binary, or the setuid wrapper? On my system sudo is `/run/wrappers/bin/sudo` but that is a setuid wrapper for `/nix/store/z008bzqrl2zc848gjhh04012jhxpl72q-sudo-1.9.15p5/bin/sudo` which is dynamically linked.
  - paholg 3y ago
    Ah, I guess I just checked the wrapper. That's what I get for doing it on my phone over ssh. I would have probably looked deeper with a real keyboard.

dralley 3y ago

If the system-provided libc is corrupt, isn't sudo the least of your concern? What else is going to work?

gkbrk 3y ago
> What else is going to work? Everything that was statically compiled.
wizzwizz4 3y ago
A statically-linked busybox, which is often enough.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

Funnily enough something similar happened to me after doing a partial update. Doing a partial update are not supported in arch linux for this very reason. sudo broke as well as many others command. ssh worked for a bit and then segfaulted. I edited my PATH to have a healthy version of libc but things kept breaking in different ways (version mismatches) In the end I had to use a live usb drive as I couldn't write to /usr/lib

rnijveld 3y ago

This only works on Linux of course since the Linux kernel and libc are not tightly coupled, on any other OS dynamically linking against libc is a necessity. Also, I've never seen anyone statically linking against glibc? Is that even something people do? I'd consider your system provided libc being broken is a similar situation to an unbootable kernel: you just need a rescue stick/partition to fix it, or reinstall your OS.