Re: [gentoo-user] [off-topic] - can /var be placed in a separate partition?

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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On Monday 12 Sep 2011 13:11:51 Mike Edenfield wrote:
> On 9/11/2011 8:28 PM, Albert W. Hopkins wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 11 at 18:54 (-0500), Dale said:
> >> I think I saw it mentioned on -dev that some time shortly /usr
> >> and /var
> >> will be needed on / or you will need the init* thingy to boot.
> > 
> > Hmm, that doesn't smell right to me.  What I think you may have heard is
> > about /run.  systemd and some other things are preferring to
> > move /var/run to /run.  The reason being is that /var does not have to
> > be on the root fs.  sysdemd needs /run early (before mounting
> > filesystems) so the idea was to put /var/run on the rootfs, thus /run.
> > 
> > I don't think /usr should or ever will be required to be on the rootfs.
> > That's just dumb.  The reason we have /bin /sbin, etc. is so that /usr
> > need not be on the rootfs.  It doesn't make sense to change that well
> > known/established notion.
> 
> Nope, Dale is exactly correct. If the upcoming changes to
> udev make it into Gentoo unaltered and unscathed, it will
> become necessary to have essentially your full system
> available very early in the boot process -- at least as
> early as when udev runs. This includes /usr, where I believe
> the udev scripts and libraries are being moved, and anything
> that any program in those scripts might access, which almost
> definitely includes /var.
> 
> Any setup where only / is mounted when udev's device
> population happens will become "unsupported" (if not
> "impossible").
> 
> The proposed alternative to a single huge partition is to
> use an initramfs that mounts your separate /usr (and /var)
> very early in the boot process.

No!  This is throwing a major spanner on all my boxen!  Arrrrgh!  :@

There's a lot of Gentoo users and I would imagine other Linux users who do not 
use initr* and still have a separate /var (because of logs, or mail, or news, 
or PORTAGE_TMPDIR, etc.).

I seriously hope that a Gentoo specific fix comes out soon and Fedora and 
their devs can carry on this way.  This M$Windows 'solution' looks more and 
more like major bad programming and is getting really really stupid!

</rant>
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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