What is bash-static used for?
What is the purpose of bash-static compared to regular bash? Is it good as a rescue shell or what is it good for?
You are probably referring to the .deb package bash-static which is a statically linked version of bash, which means that it is a stand-alone program that does not depend on anything else (especially libraries) on your disk.
I have used it on two different occasions:
- Installed on servers so that I always have a working
bash, even in catastrophic situations whenld.soorlibcare not functioning (absent, corrupt, ill-configured, …) - Delivered to customers along with my own shell scripts, so that I’m sure they have the proper version of
bash, since I was using some advanced features that were introduced with bash v4.3.