On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:29:03 -0700 Bill Anderson <bill@bill-anderson.com> wrote:
What will happen during boot, if partition /usr fails the initial filecheck? It can not be mounted, it has to be repaired first; but the system can not drop you into a repair mode with a shell, because the shell resides in /usr/bin/ Unix admins do not normally create a separate partition for /usr. In Unix, it is a relatively static directory.
Since I was in the Unix Development Environment group at Digital when Tru64 (formerly Digital Unix formerly OSF/1) let me give some history to put this into perspective. At one time it was common practice for the /usr file system to be mountable. This was when disks were small. The /bin and /lib directories were part of the root file system for boot purposes just as /sbin was supposed to be for statically built binaries. As disks got larger, the /usr directory tree was generally part of the root file system and not a separate file system. Additionally, the reason for the separation of the /bin and /usr/bin directories were eliminated. In Tru64 Unix, the clustering system invented a context-dependent symbolic link. This was added in Tru64 5.0. Since Tru64 Unix is proprietary, the installer can force the /usr tree into the root file system. I do know in Tru64 Unix 4.x you could place /usr in a separate file system. -- -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846