https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1198467
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1198467#c11
--- Comment #11 from Stefan Hundhammer ---
What I am not so sure about, though, is how viable it is these days with the
usr-merge to try to have /usr on a separate partition.
In the old Unix days, the argument to separate /usr/bin from /bin and /usr/lib
from /lib was the price of fast hard disks, so only a minimalistic system was
required to be on the root filesystem, so less essential files (which included
many very common commands) could be kept on a separate /usr.
The usr-merge did away with that consideration, moving even essential system
files to /usr; which includes many commands that are needed even for booting
the system, file utilities like /bin/cp, /bin/mv as well as shells.
Basically, with a separate /usr filesystem, you can't even boot anymore, much
less do anything useful. On an up-to-date Tumbleweed, we have those symlinks
even in the root directory:
[sh @ balrog-tw-dev] / 5 % ls -l | grep -- '->'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 M�r 9 20:00 bin -> usr/bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 M�r 9 20:00 lib -> usr/lib
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 M�r 9 20:00 lib64 -> usr/lib64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 M�r 9 20:00 sbin -> usr/sbin
[sh @ balrog-tw-dev] / 5 % cat /etc/os-release
NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed"
# VERSION="20220503"
ID="opensuse-tumbleweed"
ID_LIKE="opensuse suse"
VERSION_ID="20220503"
PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed"
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:opensuse:tumbleweed:20220503"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.opensuse.org"
HOME_URL="https://www.opensuse.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed"
LOGO="distributor-logo-Tumbleweed"
Moving /usr out to a separate partition with this setup is bound to fail in
spectacular ways.
While I personally as an old-time Unix/Linux user (going back to the late
1980s) don't like the concept of that usr-merge, it is what our openSUSE
community and our architects have decided, and it is being implemented. It's
already fully done in Tumbleweed. Leap 15.x follows SLE 15, so it will still
take a while until it will happen there as well. But I have no doubt that
eventually it will happen.
So, basically, if we start implementing a weird workaround here to take that
symlink into account, even if it spans multiple filesystems (from / to /usr),
it won't last long until it will break again. Setups with a separate /usr don't
have a future.
And frankly, I also wouldn't know what the point of such a setup is; it only
complicates things without any benefit. The days of very expensive fast disks
are over. The disk size to fit a complete Linux installation on (8-16 GiB) is
what you can buy in the supermarket; yesterday I saw a 32 GiB stick for 7.99
EUR at the checkout.
So somebody please explain why we would want to over-complicate things with
taking 1970s disk setups into account.
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