Post Syndicated from original https://lwn.net/Articles/866493/rss

Unix-like systems abound with ways to confuse new users, many of which have
been present since long before Linux entered the scene. One consistent
source of befuddlement is the “text file is busy” (ETXTBSY) error
message that is delivered in response to an attempt to overwrite an
executable image file. Linux is far less likely to deliver
ETXTBSY results than it once was, but they do still happen on
occasion. Recent work to simplify the mechanism behind ETXTBSY
has raised a more fundamental question: does this error check have any
value at all?