> Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 17:39:48 +0100 (BST)
> From: Bryn Paul Arnold Jones <bpaj@gytha.demon.co.uk>
> To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi>
> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@caip.rutgers.edu>, jfm@sidney.remcomp.fr,
> linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
> Subject: Re: PLEASE! The person who patched kernel/exit.c for 2.0.1 contact me
>
> On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> >
> > "To boldly binary patch commercial programs where no commercial program has
> > been binary patched before..". Has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? Now the
> > question is just: "Who is first?"
> >
> > Linus
> >
>
> Next thing someone's going to write a bindiff/binpatch suite (a free one).
> I can see the reasoning behind that, especialy if we were breaking it at
> 2.1.1, but as it's at 2.0.1, a lot of people are going to want a fixed
> version that will work with 2.0.22 (or will it be .23 ?).
>
> Not that many people are compitent, or willing to attempt to binary patch
> it ("Scares the willies out of me").
What, you don't use sed to patch binaries? (I have... not fun)
Great for fixing typos without the source!
sed s/reallylongstring/shortstring\0<pad to the end of longstring/ < file
> file~
then check they are the same size.
;-)
seriously though, there should be a binary patcher out there somewhere...
I mean, this is the unix world, so someone must have one. (Like David
said, some people need to fix kernel bugs WITHOUT kernel source)
Hmm... how would you find an old, useful program? If I go searching
for "binary editor AND unix" all I'm gonna find is new super duper version
17.9 with bugs galore... Well I'll keep an eye out and look through
archives of comp.sources.unix for something.
Hey, try this:
uuencode
patch (yea, the same one we use on linux kernels)
uudecode
The patch shouldn't take up more lines then you have code changes. If it
does, you broke the binary (shifted bytes)
2 good reasons:
A) everyone has the tools
B) you can distribute the patches in plain text
--Dan