From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C3CC41381F3 for ; Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:16:09 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id E87A021C018; Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:15:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-wg0-f43.google.com (mail-wg0-f43.google.com [74.125.82.43]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8703A21C009 for ; Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:14:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-wg0-f43.google.com with SMTP id e12so2176921wge.10 for ; Sun, 16 Dec 2012 07:14:16 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=date:from:to:subject:message-id:in-reply-to:references:organization :x-mailer:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=ukRIxsAWQlK0zzGqOsemBTgfDAm5NnYsUHSS5Tv3Qm4=; b=RW0KBkBBJkPxmyPvKaG/HvEeC50Ehl0/C224RT9J1ARQ6mGtGFLVn5SdCSf+I9Mr7T xvD/H3LJtNH7R4qIkQVLlria3+oXj63OX4k6pYo6zFnev/Lw0VWz5TAysHYDHPi6Ka4P FRQE1mDEIyldS464VwJNXBGxWUZ7vR6pDVGYbQVbm8ijW324OGpoVaCc9SyreMEuBXTT TZZMGE7Q3AKFMMAEt5SXnpTC9CAKsvXjSjtBQptx1fJNsam+7W/0knsCdMxGnomM7vm9 Hv81hp7XxBNujRJg7F52Gx0IhNBXLdmGPpWjW2Aa88DnNuMfVDkfueJFiEprYRLARE0f Ac/Q== Received: by 10.180.74.20 with SMTP id p20mr11295309wiv.0.1355670856152; Sun, 16 Dec 2012 07:14:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from khamul.example.com (196-215-209-117.dynamic.isadsl.co.za. [196.215.209.117]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id w5sm6942389wif.11.2012.12.16.07.14.12 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 16 Dec 2012 07:14:14 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:10:43 +0200 From: Alan McKinnon To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Anyone switched to eudev yet? Message-ID: <20121216171043.71084070@khamul.example.com> In-Reply-To: <8738z7hgsa.fsf@ist.utl.pt> References: <50CB1942.3020900@gmail.com> <50CB4A3C.1030109@gmail.com> <50CB5406.7040404@gmail.com> <8738z7hgsa.fsf@ist.utl.pt> Organization: Internet Solutions X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.8.1 (GTK+ 2.24.14; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 6e783c58-977b-446b-923e-75c02cc4ff46 X-Archives-Hash: 59db2188ab3a019704ee0f7ab6d9e0a3 On Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:16:05 +0200 nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt (Nuno J. Silva) wrote: > On 2012-12-14, Mark Knecht wrote: > > > I guess the other question that's lurking here for me is why do you > > have /usr on a separate partition? What's the usage model that > > drives a person to do that? The most I've ever done is > > move /usr/portage and /usr/src to other places. My /usr never has > > all that much in it beyond those two directories, along with > > maybe /usr/share. Would it not be easier for you in the long run to > > move /usr back to / and not have to deal with this question at all? > > I may be wrong in this one, but the idea I have is that your regular > applications (so, most of them) all lie under /usr/ -- /lib /bin and > others are for essential system tools. > That was the original reason for having / and /usr separate, and it dates back to the early 70s. The other reason that stems from that time period is the size of disks we had back then - they were tiny and often a minimal / was all that could really fit on the primary system drive. Gradually over time this setup became the norm and people started to depend on it, and more importantly, started to believe it was important to retain it. It's their right to believe that. Recently I decided to measure if I still needed a separate /usr (I was a long time advocate of retaining it). I'm in the lucky position of having ~200 Linux machines, all distinctly different, at my disposal, so I trawled through memory and incident logs looking for cases where a separate /usr was crucial to recovery after any form of error. To my surprise, I found none at all and those logs go back 5 years. So I got to change my mind (not something I do very often I admit) and concluded that separate base and user systems (/ and /usr) was no longer something I needed to do - the "system" - disks, hardware and the software on the disks - was very reliable, and what I really needed was ability to boot from USB rescue disks. I did find, not unsurprisingly, that I also really needed /usr/local on a separate partition but that's because of how we install our in-house software here, plus our backup policies. It also goes without saying that these days we need /home, /var, /var/log and /tmp to all be on their own filesystem, and we need that more than ever. I thought I should just toss that in the ring for people who are undecided where they stand on the debate of separate / vs /usr. It's what I found on our production, dev and staging servers, plus a whole lot of people's personal workstations (sysadmins and devs). The environment is a large corporate ISP that defies categorization, we almost have at least one of every imaginable use-case for running on Linux except something in the Top 100 SuperComputer list. I reckon it's about as representative as I'm ever gonna see. People are free to draw their own conclusions as always, and real data is valuable in arriving at those conclusions. YMMV. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckinnon@gmail.com