[opensuse-factory] Restructuring /usr/bin, etc. [WAS: sles? ]

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Kay Sievers wrote:

On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 15:27 +0200, Guido Berhoerster wrote:

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* Kay Sievers [2010-08-06 13:36]:

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On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 09:42 +0200, Stefan Seyfried wrote:

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On Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:03:22 +0200 Kay Sievers wrote:

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I think that /usr on nfs, or even on a different disk should just get a reality check, and be finally dropped.

Having /usr, /var, /opt and /tmp on different partitions / disks is basically a standard setup for lots of real-world corporate installations.

The people who break such standard setups (or even think about breaking them) all the time should just get a reality check...

/usr not on the rootfs is broken since ages for anything that isn't a simple server. It does not make any sense to do that, and that's why nobody really cares.

Many things plugging into udev/hotplug break if /usr is not available at early boot. I stopped asking people to fix such things.

Unfortunately an all too common attitude in Linuxland. Anyway, can we then just be honest and officially abandon the now arbitrary /bin /sbin -- /usr/bin /usr/sbin separation by moving stuff and symlinking /bin and /sbin to /usr? It's nothing uncommon, Solaris/OpenSolaris, HP-UX, and AIX for example all don't have a separate /bin any more. It would certainly ease the pain with linking libraries which are in /usr.

Anything like this sounds good to me. It's just a pretty useless exercise with this artificial split. I would understand to have 'the desktop' split out into /usr, but everything else is just crazy. An it seems entirely random what we do here today. The 'maybe needed at boot' thing just does not mean anything today.

The real fix is a properly working read-only /, for people who use /usr on a separate filesystem, anyway.

Kay

I'm not clear what exactly is being proposed, but any significant shuffling of /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/lib will potentially impact a lot of existing installs. I have machines (low-end servers) I setup 7 or 8 years ago and have simply been upgrading over the years. One I just checked has a 2GB / (root) and a 5 GB /usr. Neither have enough freespace to absorb the other, so I'd likely have to re-install the OS from scratch on those. (I know, 7 years later, it's about time anyway.) Regardless, I'm not saying my setup of a few machines is enough to drive the future, but I do think it begs the question as to how common setups like mine are. Is there a way to know? Does smolt collect that sort of info? Can smolt be extended to collect it. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org