On Friday 2021-01-08 13:29, Martin Wilck wrote:
On Tue, 2021-01-05 at 17:03 +0100, Ludwig Nussel wrote:
- NFS root or similar concepts, where system files are shared between multiple hosts. Is this obsolete today, as storage has become so cheap that sharing system directories is no issue any more?
The big traditional problem with nonstandard root devices is that one is constantly fighting the initramfs generators. Some want the / source device to always exist (which is not the case with aufs), and only allow non-existing devices when using some "nfs" mode. But the nfs mode does not support constructing an aufs mount. Not to mention that the classic /etc/fstab did not even have the ability to specify a placeholder such as macaddr, or the mount move operations. One would always end up writing the shell code for the mount dance custom, and then try to funnel that into the initramfs.. arguably it's gotten better with the presence of systemd inside the initramfs. mount -t nfs fs:/srv/suse /a1 mount -t nfs fs:/srv/rw/<macaddr> /a2 mount -t aufs -o upper=/a2:lower=/a1 aufs /sysroot mkdir /sysroot/a1 mkdir /sysroot/a2 mount --move /a1 /sysroot/a1 mount --move /a2 /sysroot/a2
- arch dependence / independence (think /usr/share vs. /usr/lib). (If we redesign the file system, we might consider stashing arch-dependent files into separate hierachies, going from "lib vs lib64" towards something like "lib.x86_64 vs lib.ppc64le" etc)
Debian is doing that since a long time, but as long as no one else is jumping on the train, it probably won't progress.