[systemd-devel] Antw: Re: Antw: [EXT] Dropping split-usr/unmerged-usr support

Ulrich Windl Ulrich.Windl at rz.uni-regensburg.de
Thu Apr 7 06:32:47 UTC 2022


>>> Wols Lists <antlists at youngman.org.uk> schrieb am 06.04.2022 um 21:41 in
Nachricht <ae406587-8e46-0405-d14e-cb7f7b7dfe07 at youngman.org.uk>:
> On 06/04/2022 10:34, Luca Boccassi wrote:
>>> Symlinking /sbin or /usr/sbin binaries to /usr is also a bad concept
>>> IMHO.
>>>
>>> It seems systemd is the new Microsoft ("We know what is good for you;
>>> just accept it!");-)
> 
> Well, I saw a link to WHY we have /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin etc. Interesting 
> read ...
> 
> / was disk0. /usr was apparently originally short for /user, on disk1. 
> Then the system disk ran out of space, so they created /usr/bin to have 
> more space. So when they got a 3rd disk, they called it /home and moved 
> all the user directories across ...

However space is not the only reason: Back in the times of non-journaling filesystems (and slow disks where a fsck could take 40 minutes or more) it was highly desirable to have a small root filesystem that could be checked quickly, to root had the chance to become active.
Even today when something bad happens, one would probably prefer to have multiple smaller filesystems to repair rather than one "huge pot". MHO.
Agreed Windows users who only know C: never wasted much thoughts on structure; see the mess in C:\Windows. But I thought UNIX was highly structured...

Regards,
Ulrich


>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Ulrich
>> Sorry, but you are about ~10 years late to this debate:-)  The question
>> today is not whether it's good or bad, but who's left to do the switch.
>> 
>> We know Fedora/RHEL/CentOS/SUSE/Arch/Ubuntu have done the switch, and
>> presumably any of their derivatives.
>> 
>> We know Debian is, er, working on it, as per the most recent article on
>> LWN.
>> 
>> What about other distros that are not derivatives of the aboves and
>> that use systemd? Does anybody have any insight?
> 
> gentoo defaults to OpenRC, but I'm running systemd. As far as I can tell 
> I appear to have three distinct directories, /bin, /sbin, and /usr
> 
> I also have a fourth and fifth distinct directory, /usr/bin and 
> /usr/sbin. What if any plans there are to merge them I have no clue.
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol






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