Re: Should /usr be merged with /? (Was: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Anyone switched to eudev yet?)

[Paul Colquhoun <paulcol@andor.dropbear.id.au>]

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On Sat, 29 Dec 2012 12:27:03 Mark David Dumlao wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 2:53 AM, Kevin Chadwick <ma1l1ists@yahoo.co.uk> 
wrote:
> > On Sat, 29 Dec 2012 01:16:34 +0800
> > 
> > Mark David Dumlao <madumlao@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>  whatever filesystem type
> >> 
> >> it is.
> >>
> >>Following this, for any distro to correctly FHS, there needs to be a
> >>package manager switch to copy arbitrary packages (and dependent
> >>libraries) from /usr to /. As of yet not implemented.
> >>
> > Not at all, FUSE is a userspace flesystem meant to be used after single
> > user.
> > 
> > The spec says you have to be able to mount other filesystems not all
> > other filesystems. I'd like to see you mount an OpenBSD ffs partition.
> 
> If "other filesystems" is not qualified (and it is not), normal
> English rules would have it mean "all other filesystems" which I take
> to mean "all other filesystems on the system". Can you justify a
> better interpretation?


The latest FHS dates from 2004, the same year as the *earliest* FUSE release I 
can see on the FUSE web site.  I'd say a good working hypothesis is that FHS 
was simply written *before* any user-space file systems were more than an 
experimental oddity.


> IF the system's /home directory is formatted as an OpenBSD partition,
> then yes, FHS demands that tools for mounting and recovering it be in
> /.


I'd certainly be happy "fixing" FHS to say that tools for mounting and 
recovering "essential system partitions" be located in /, and that these 
"essential system partitions" contain the tools for mounting and recovering 
non-essential partitions.

If you are wondering where I stand, I currently boot with an initramfs, since 
I have everything except /boot located on LVM devices. This includes / and a 
seperate /usr, done mostly from habit after 15 years of habit, and working 
where that was the corporate standard production practice.

As to system recovery, nowdays I ususlly do that by booting from a live CD/DVD 
so I have access to all the tools when I need them. Which reminds me that I 
need to update my rescue DVD to the latest version...


-- 
Reverend Paul Colquhoun, ULC.    http://andor.dropbear.id.au/~paulcol
     Asking for technical help in newsgroups?  Read this first:
        http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro

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