Hello all, On 2010-08-09 T 14:16 +0200 Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Guido Berhoerster wrote:
In my experience Kay is a lot quicker to dismiss something as "legacy" than (SLE) customers or (openSUSE) users. Don't worry, for the former we have people keeping an eye on the real customer requirements, but I certainly advise to be somewhat careful on openSUSE as well. If this is business-critical to Novell why doesn't anybody ensure that NFS-mounted /usr keeps working?
It is a fully supported scenario for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (and the releases before) and very likely will be a fully supported scenario for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.
Indeed, I confirmed that it has been a supported feature in all SUSE Linux Enterprise and SUSE Linux/openSUSE releases at least since we officially supported the FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard). Carlos E. R. also mentioned this on Friday. http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEFILESYSTEM says: ----------------------------< snip >---------------------------- Rationale Shareable files can be stored on one host and used on several others. Typically, however, not all files in the filesystem hierarchy are shareable and so each system has local storage containing at least its unshareable files. It is convenient if all the files a system requires that are stored on a foreign host can be made available by mounting one or a few directories from the foreign host. [...] Here is an example of a FHS-compliant system. (Other FHS-compliant layouts are possible.) ┌────────┬───────────────┬───────────┐ │ │ shareable │unshareable│ ├────────┼───────────────┼───────────┤ │static │/usr │/etc │ ├────────┼───────────────┼───────────┤ │ │/opt │/boot │ ├────────┼───────────────┼───────────┤ │variable│/var/mail │/var/run │ ├────────┼───────────────┼───────────┤ │ │/var/spool/news│/var/lock │ └────────┴───────────────┴───────────┘ ----------------------------< snap >---------------------------- Q1: Is FHS compliance an important part of openSUSE as a Linux distribution?
It is not a top priority for Novell to see in openSUSE 11.4 and "ensure" is too strong a word from that perspective though it would be sad to see it being broken. Let's keep in mind: when it comes to openSUSE, Novell is just one stakeholder, even if one contributing a ton.
I fully agree. I think though, we should do a next step, and analyze if the requirements are also in the interest of openSUSE beyond Novell. Here what had been mentioned already in this thread: - Thin Clients - Virtual machines - all (other) use cases with "read only root" Q2: Are those use cases valid for openSUSE? If we agree to a "Yes" on both questions, then keeping "/usr" a shareable and static filesystem will remain a requirement for openSUSE -- and packages should be adopted accordingly. so long - MgE -- Matthias G. Eckermann Senior Product Manager - SUSE® Linux Enterprise - Server Product Line SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org