[gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

mingdao@workstation ~ $ eselect news read
2013-09-27-initramfs-required
  Title                     Separate /usr on Linux requires initramfs
  Author                    William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>
  Posted                    2013-09-27
  Revision                  1

Linux systems which have / and /usr on separate file systems but do not
use an initramfs will not be supported starting on 01-Nov-2013.

If you have / and /usr on separate file systems and you are not
currently using an initramfs, you must set one up before this date.
Otherwise, at some point on or after this date, upgrading packages
will make your system unbootable.

For more information on setting up an initramfs, see this URL:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Initramfs/HOWTO

Due to many upstream changes, properly supporting Linux systems that
have /usr missing at boot time has become increasingly difficult.
Despite all our efforts, it already breaks in some exotic
configurations, and this trend is likely to grow worse.

For more information on the upstream changes and why using an initramfs
is the cleanest route forward, see the following URLs:

http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
https://blog.flameeyes.eu/2013/01/the-boot-process

-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Bruce Hill wrote:
> mingdao@workstation ~ $ eselect news read
> 2013-09-27-initramfs-required
>   Title                     Separate /usr on Linux requires initramfs
>   Author                    William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>
>   Posted                    2013-09-27
>   Revision                  1
>
> Linux systems which have / and /usr on separate file systems but do not
> use an initramfs will not be supported starting on 01-Nov-2013.
>
> If you have / and /usr on separate file systems and you are not
> currently using an initramfs, you must set one up before this date.
> Otherwise, at some point on or after this date, upgrading packages
> will make your system unbootable.
>
> For more information on setting up an initramfs, see this URL:
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Initramfs/HOWTO
>
> Due to many upstream changes, properly supporting Linux systems that
> have /usr missing at boot time has become increasingly difficult.
> Despite all our efforts, it already breaks in some exotic
> configurations, and this trend is likely to grow worse.
>
> For more information on the upstream changes and why using an initramfs
> is the cleanest route forward, see the following URLs:
>
> http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
> https://blog.flameeyes.eu/2013/01/the-boot-process
>


I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.  If
I do, this could get interesting, again. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> Bruce Hill wrote:
> > mingdao@workstation ~ $ eselect news read
> > 2013-09-27-initramfs-required
> >   Title                     Separate /usr on Linux requires initramfs
> >   Author                    William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>
> >   Posted                    2013-09-27
> >   Revision                  1
> >
> > Linux systems which have / and /usr on separate file systems but do not
> > use an initramfs will not be supported starting on 01-Nov-2013.
> >
> > If you have / and /usr on separate file systems and you are not
> > currently using an initramfs, you must set one up before this date.
> > Otherwise, at some point on or after this date, upgrading packages
> > will make your system unbootable.
> >
> > For more information on setting up an initramfs, see this URL:
> >
> > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Initramfs/HOWTO
> >
> > Due to many upstream changes, properly supporting Linux systems that
> > have /usr missing at boot time has become increasingly difficult.
> > Despite all our efforts, it already breaks in some exotic
> > configurations, and this trend is likely to grow worse.
> >
> > For more information on the upstream changes and why using an initramfs
> > is the cleanest route forward, see the following URLs:
> >
> > http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
> > https://blog.flameeyes.eu/2013/01/the-boot-process
> >
> 
> 
> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.  If
> I do, this could get interesting, again. 
> 
> Dale

Do you have /usr separate from / ?
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Bruce Hill wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
>> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale 
> Do you have /usr separate from / ?

Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
this problem tho. 

One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 28/09/2013 00:57, Dale wrote:
> Bruce Hill wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
>>> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale 
>> Do you have /usr separate from / ?
> 
> Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
> this problem tho. 
> 
> One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
> partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
> full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
> it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol 


Ask yourself this question:

Why do you have /usr separate?

No really, *why exactly*?

One of the very first things you do with /usr at boot time is mount it,
and from then on you use it exactly as if it were always on / anyway.
I'll bet that since you moved all of portage out, your mount options and
fs configs are the same between the two anyway. So what exactly does a
separate /usr get you on a stabd-alone workstation buy you? I've been
looking at this for ages and conclude it buys me nothing but pain. They
don't even change much if /home and /var are elsewhere, so guage your
size right (easy to do) and never need look at it again.

Separate /usr for the most part is an ancient artifact from decades ago.
It's useful in edge cases but not in the general case with modern
hardware. So why do people do it? I reckon it's inertia and nothign
more. Which is kinda silly as inertia ignores everythign else in the
environment that is changing around you (and *that* is a given).

So unless you have something exotic like /usr mounted off a central
server, or want / on LVM (and your grub doesn't support lvm), you are
going to need an initramfs anyway to get around the circular bootstrap
problem.

I say people should make their lives easier and just stick /usr on the
same volume as / and be done with it. It removes a whole lot of painful
scenarios that are going to keep on biting you as the rest of the world
moves on and progresses

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 01:10:14 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> One of the very first things you do with /usr at boot time is mount it,
> and from then on you use it exactly as if it were always on / anyway.
> I'll bet that since you moved all of portage out, your mount options and
> fs configs are the same between the two anyway. So what exactly does a
> separate /usr get you on a stabd-alone workstation buy you?

If allows you to have /usr on a volume manager, LVM of ZFS, without the
extra work of putting / on there. / doesn't really need to be on LVM/ZFS
since its size is unlikely to change much.

However, the main reason, IMO, for not putting root on the volume manager
is to avoid the use of an initramfs. If it's going to require it anyway,
you may as well use the initramfs to put / on the same managed volume
as /usr. That's the route I took a while ago, using an initramfs to avoid
having a separate /usr.

On the eudev vs. udev point: Dale, if you read flameyes's blog post,
you'll see that this isn't just about udev.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Windows Error #01: No error... ...yet.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:57:06PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> Bruce Hill wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> >> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
> >> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale 
> > Do you have /usr separate from / ?
> 
> Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
> this problem tho. 
> 
> One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
> partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
> full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
> it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol 
> 
> Dale

You need to read the blog post listed in the news item, as it's not just
specific to udev anymore.
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[David W Noon]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 01:10:14 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re:
[gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01:

> On 28/09/2013 00:57, Dale wrote:
> > Bruce Hill wrote:
> >> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> >>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about
> >>> this. If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale 
> >> Do you have /usr separate from / ?
> > 
> > Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be
> > affected by this problem tho. 
> > 
> > One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
> > partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a
> > bit full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out
> > and put it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol 
> 
> 
> Ask yourself this question:
> 
> Why do you have /usr separate?
> 
> No really, *why exactly*?

You write as though you expected the question to be regarded as
rhetorical.

I can't speak for Dale, but since I have much the same arrangement
(with /boot and / on physical partitions and everything else under LVM2
control) I shall write from my perspective.

The reason I have /usr separate is so that I can have it striped
without needing an initramfs.

> One of the very first things you do with /usr at boot time is mount
> it, and from then on you use it exactly as if it were always on /
> anyway.

No.  The I/O characteristics of a striped /usr are rather different from
those of / on a simple partition.

> I'll bet that since you moved all of portage out, your mount
> options and fs configs are the same between the two anyway.

Again no.  My portage volume has different mount options from /usr, as
it has nosuid and noexec in force.  The portage volume is not striped
either, as it does not get as much I/O traffic as /usr.

> So what
> exactly does a separate /usr get you on a stabd-alone workstation buy
> you?

It buys me decent performance from elderly PATA hard drives.  Striping
gives a throughput multiplier on that corner of the DASD farm.

This is advantageous because /usr/bin and /usr/lib receive a lot of
data traffic running application programs -- much more than /bin
and /lib.  The /usr/bin directory appears earlier in my PATH than /bin
and the majority of application software is loaded without /bin being
troubled.  The faster the /usr LV can respond, the faster software can
load.

> I've been looking at this for ages and conclude it buys me
> nothing but pain. They don't even change much if /home and /var are
> elsewhere, so guage your size right (easy to do) and never need look
> at it again.
> 
> Separate /usr for the most part is an ancient artifact from decades
> ago. It's useful in edge cases but not in the general case with modern
> hardware. So why do people do it? I reckon it's inertia and nothign
> more. Which is kinda silly as inertia ignores everythign else in the
> environment that is changing around you (and *that* is a given).

I'm not sure if you're invoking some law of physics here, but inertia
does not ignore everything else -- even if it actually offers
resistance to change, it does not ignore it.

> So unless you have something exotic like /usr mounted off a central
> server, or want / on LVM (and your grub doesn't support lvm), you are
> going to need an initramfs anyway to get around the circular bootstrap
> problem.

I am yet to have a circular dependency problem in my bootstrap
sequence.  Of course, I don't have bluez installed.  I also do not have
udev or systemd installed.

> I say people should make their lives easier and just stick /usr on the
> same volume as / and be done with it. It removes a whole lot of
> painful scenarios that are going to keep on biting you as the rest of
> the world moves on and progresses

That then devolves the I/O characteristics of /usr/bin and /usr/lib
into those of /bin and /lib, which would make a slow system even slower.
-- 
Regards,

Dave  [RLU #314465]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
dwnoon@ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 2324 bytes --]

On Saturday 28 Sep 2013 01:39:57 David W Noon wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 01:10:14 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re:
> 
> [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01:
> > On 28/09/2013 00:57, Dale wrote:
> > > Bruce Hill wrote:
> > >> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> > >>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about
> > >>> this. If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale
> > >> 
> > >> Do you have /usr separate from / ?
> > > 
> > > Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be
> > > affected by this problem tho.
> > > 
> > > One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
> > > partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a
> > > bit full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out
> > > and put it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol
> > 
> > Ask yourself this question:
> > 
> > Why do you have /usr separate?
> > 
> > No really, *why exactly*?
> 
> You write as though you expected the question to be regarded as
> rhetorical.
> 
> I can't speak for Dale, but since I have much the same arrangement
> (with /boot and / on physical partitions and everything else under LVM2
> control) I shall write from my perspective.
> 
> The reason I have /usr separate is so that I can have it striped
> without needing an initramfs.
> 
> > One of the very first things you do with /usr at boot time is mount
> > it, and from then on you use it exactly as if it were always on /
> > anyway.
> 
> No.  The I/O characteristics of a striped /usr are rather different from
> those of / on a simple partition.
> 
> > I'll bet that since you moved all of portage out, your mount
> > options and fs configs are the same between the two anyway.
> 
> Again no.  My portage volume has different mount options from /usr, as
> it has nosuid and noexec in force.  The portage volume is not striped
> either, as it does not get as much I/O traffic as /usr.

Another reason that I have seen mentioned for running /usr separately is to 
mount it as read only for security reasons.  It is a moot point how much this 
improves security, other than by yourself when you run 'rm -Rf /usr' one day 
by mistake.  ;-)

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 28/09/2013 00:57, Dale wrote:
>> Bruce Hill wrote:
>>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
>>>> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale 
>>> Do you have /usr separate from / ?
>> Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
>> this problem tho. 
>>
>> One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
>> partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
>> full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
>> it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol 
>
> Ask yourself this question:
>
> Why do you have /usr separate?
>
> No really, *why exactly*?
>
> One of the very first things you do with /usr at boot time is mount it,
> and from then on you use it exactly as if it were always on / anyway.
> I'll bet that since you moved all of portage out, your mount options and
> fs configs are the same between the two anyway. So what exactly does a
> separate /usr get you on a stabd-alone workstation buy you? I've been
> looking at this for ages and conclude it buys me nothing but pain. They
> don't even change much if /home and /var are elsewhere, so guage your
> size right (easy to do) and never need look at it again.
>
> Separate /usr for the most part is an ancient artifact from decades ago.
> It's useful in edge cases but not in the general case with modern
> hardware. So why do people do it? I reckon it's inertia and nothign
> more. Which is kinda silly as inertia ignores everythign else in the
> environment that is changing around you (and *that* is a given).
>
> So unless you have something exotic like /usr mounted off a central
> server, or want / on LVM (and your grub doesn't support lvm), you are
> going to need an initramfs anyway to get around the circular bootstrap
> problem.
>
> I say people should make their lives easier and just stick /usr on the
> same volume as / and be done with it. It removes a whole lot of painful
> scenarios that are going to keep on biting you as the rest of the world
> moves on and progresses
>

I answered that question already.  I have / and /boot on regular
partitions and EVERYTHING else on LVM.  That includes /home, /usr and
/var. 

/dev/sda6 on / type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
/dev/mapper/OS-usr on /usr type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/OS-var on /var type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/home-home on /home type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/backup-backup on /backup type ext4 (rw,commit=0)

I also have the backup partition but that is only needed when I make
one.  At any rate. I don't have some exotic hardware like a bluetooth
keyboard and other such needless stuff. 

As someone else posted, some folks have different mount options for /usr
that they do for others partitions.  For me, I just want to keep it
seperate so that I can adjust things with LVM if I need to.  Something I
have done a couple times I might add just since I started using LVM a
few years ago.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> No really,*why exactly*?

Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first 
set this system up many years ago.

I have no philosophical reason reason to stick with it, only a (maybe 
irrational) fear of breaking things if I attempt to merge it back into /.

This, combined with an intense (also maybe irrational) desire to avoid 
like the plague using an initramfs, is why this decision to FORCE me 
into a position of possibly having to break my system (either by a filed 
attempt at merging /usr into /, or a failed attampt at using an initramfs).

I too sincerely hope eudev bypasses this issue.

The main thing about this that pisses me off is the lack of enough 
warning... one month? Really? One month to compleyelt rebuild a seerver 
that has been running flawlessly for many years, just because someone 
doesn't like something that has been done for many years?

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 03:42:01AM -0500, Dale wrote:
> 
> 
> As someone else posted, some folks have different mount options for /usr
> that they do for others partitions.  For me, I just want to keep it
> seperate so that I can adjust things with LVM if I need to.  Something I
> have done a couple times I might add just since I started using LVM a
> few years ago.
> 
> Dale

You are welcome to keep it separate. What you're being told by the Gentoo
devs, specifically WilliamH, is that the Gentoo devs can no longer support
early mount of /usr separate from / and if you choose to keep that, your
system is going to require an initramfs to boot.

Just that simple.

All the "we don't want them shoving whatever down our throats" arguments are a
waste of time. You have been warned over 30 days in advance.

This does not mean that on November 1 your system will not be able to boot.
Its simply means that beginning November 1, Gentoo devs are not required to
jump through hoops to make apps work on systems with /usr separate from /.

Now, what are you going to do? That's the question.

1 - keep ranting about "them" and what "they are doing to me"?
2 - move your /usr under / ?
3 - learn HOW-TO make and install an initramfs?
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[David W Noon]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 07:30:45 -0500, Bruce Hill wrote about "Re:
[gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01":

[snip]
>Now, what are you going to do? That's the question.
>
>1 - keep ranting about "them" and what "they are doing to me"?
>2 - move your /usr under / ?
>3 - learn HOW-TO make and install an initramfs?

I'm taking option 4: keep things the same until something breaks and
then (and only then) do whatever is necessary to fix it.

[Note that I have already done option 3 -- even going back to the days
of initrd, which was required by SuSE a decade or more ago when I was
running that distro.]
-- 
Regards,

Dave  [RLU #314465]
======================================================================
dwnoon@ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
======================================================================

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 01:49:27PM +0100, David W Noon wrote:
> 
> I'm taking option 4: keep things the same until something breaks and
> then (and only then) do whatever is necessary to fix it.
> 
> [Note that I have already done option 3 -- even going back to the days
> of initrd, which was required by SuSE a decade or more ago when I was
> running that distro.]

You can only confidently make that choice because you already learned HOW-TO
make an initramfs. And, contrary to popular FUD, initrd.gz work today, also.
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Michael Hampicke]

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Am 28.09.2013 13:32, schrieb Tanstaafl:
> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> No really,*why exactly*?
> 
> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first
> set this system up many years ago.
> 

Where did you read that? According to the 2004 handbook the default
partition scheme was:

Partition	Filesystem	Size	Description
/dev/hda1	ext2	32M	Boot partition
/dev/hda2	(swap)	512M	Swap partition
/dev/hda3	ext3	Rest of the disk	Root partition


http://web.archive.org/web/20040419042803/http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 28/09/2013 13:32, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> No really,*why exactly*?
> 
> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first
> set this system up many years ago.

This was something almost all of us recommended way back then. Lord only
knows why we recommeded that. Maybe it was small drives (which  didn't
have), maybe it was different mount options (which I never did and never
saw anyone else do either), or maybe it was for thin clients (which I
only ever saw in use once - Shuttleworth labs in University of Cape Town).

So why did we all (and I included myself) recommend this so much? Dude,
I have no idea, but I *think* we were cargo-culting more than any other
single factor.


> I have no philosophical reason reason to stick with it, only a (maybe
> irrational) fear of breaking things if I attempt to merge it back into /.
> 
> This, combined with an intense (also maybe irrational) desire to avoid
> like the plague using an initramfs, is why this decision to FORCE me
> into a position of possibly having to break my system (either by a filed
> attempt at merging /usr into /, or a failed attampt at using an initramfs).

No-one is forcing you to do anything, the news item did not say that.

It says that if you do it, the devs will not support you and you are on
your own. It also says that in the dev's opinion, the day when you can
no longer support it either is probably not too far away

> I too sincerely hope eudev bypasses this issue.

This has nothing to do with eudev, not with udev

> The main thing about this that pisses me off is the lack of enough
> warning... one month? Really? One month to compleyelt rebuild a seerver
> that has been running flawlessly for many years, just because someone
> doesn't like something that has been done for many years?


First, it is not one month, it is much longer. We've all been whinging
about the issue for most of this year. Two, why do you think you need to
rebuild the entire machine? You don't need to do that just to merge two
filesystems.

To merge two filesystems, you just merge two filesystems. You don't
rebuild anything. You might have some downtime though

Please see the news item for what it actually is, not something else.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

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Michael Hampicke wrote:
> Am 28.09.2013 13:32, schrieb Tanstaafl:
>> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> No really,*why exactly*?
>>
>> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first
>> set this system up many years ago.
>>
>
> Where did you read that? According to the 2004 handbook the default
> partition scheme was:
>
> Partition    Filesystem    Size    Description
> /dev/hda1    ext2    32M    Boot partition
> /dev/hda2    (swap)    512M    Swap partition
> /dev/hda3    ext3    Rest of the disk    Root partition
>
>
>
http://web.archive.org/web/20040419042803/http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1
>



I guess I got mine from the handbook back in early 2003.  That is when I
did my first install.

Also, as I stated, I have / and /boot on regular partitions and
everything else on LVM.  Care to guess why I don't have / on a LVM too? 
Yep, to avoid the init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM because grub
didn't support it.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[William Hubbs]

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On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 07:32:20PM -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:57:06PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> > Bruce Hill wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> > >> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
> > >> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale 
> > > Do you have /usr separate from / ?
> > 
> > Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
> > this problem tho. 
> > 
> > One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
> > partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
> > full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
> > it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol 
> > 
> > Dale
> 
> You need to read the blog post listed in the news item, as it's not just
> specific to udev anymore.

Bruce is correct; This issue is not specific to udev/eudev/mdev.

I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically for
this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.

If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what the
issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal with which
software is considered critical for booting.

There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you will
need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.

I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs which I
built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there.

I recommend that you familiarize yourself with genkernel or dracut and
build an initramfs. Since nothing is changing until at least
Nov 1, you can test your initramfs by adding an entry to your boot
loader configuration that uses it and get it set up correctly while you
can still fall back on booting without it.

I do not recommend that anyone who has separate /usr "do nothing" at
this point. Please re-read the second paragraph of the news item.

Thanks,

William


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mick]

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On Saturday 28 Sep 2013 16:06:39 Dale wrote:
> Michael Hampicke wrote:
> > Am 28.09.2013 13:32, schrieb Tanstaafl:
> >> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> No really,*why exactly*?
> >> 
> >> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first
> >> set this system up many years ago.
> > 
> > Where did you read that? According to the 2004 handbook the default
> > partition scheme was:
> > 
> > Partition    Filesystem    Size    Description
> > /dev/hda1    ext2    32M    Boot partition
> > /dev/hda2    (swap)    512M    Swap partition
> > /dev/hda3    ext3    Rest of the disk    Root partition
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20040419042803/http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/hand
> book/handbook-x86.xml?full=1
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I guess I got mine from the handbook back in early 2003.  That is when I
> did my first install.
> 
> Also, as I stated, I have / and /boot on regular partitions and
> everything else on LVM.  Care to guess why I don't have / on a LVM too?
> Yep, to avoid the init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM because grub
> didn't support it.
> 
> Dale

I recall that in 2003 the separate /usr was shown as an option of multi-
partition install, rather than the 'recommended' way to install gentoo.  Many 
followed it and some stayed with it.  In those heady days of slow ATA drives, 
moving a partition closer to the start of the disk also made a difference in 
access/read/write speeds.  Even with SATA 1.0 I used to get some noticeable 
difference, although I never ran any benchmarks at the time.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

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William Hubbs wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 07:32:20PM -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:57:06PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>> Bruce Hill wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
>>>>> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale
>>>> Do you have /usr separate from / ?
>>>
>>> Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
>>> this problem tho.
>>>
>>> One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
>>> partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
>>> full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
>>> it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol
>>>
>>> Dale
>>
>> You need to read the blog post listed in the news item, as it's not just
>> specific to udev anymore.
>
> Bruce is correct; This issue is not specific to udev/eudev/mdev.
>
> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically for
> this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
>
> If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what the
> issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal with which
> software is considered critical for booting.
>
> There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
> have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you will
> need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.
>
> I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs which I
> built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there.
>
> I recommend that you familiarize yourself with genkernel or dracut and
> build an initramfs. Since nothing is changing until at least
> Nov 1, you can test your initramfs by adding an entry to your boot
> loader configuration that uses it and get it set up correctly while you
> can still fall back on booting without it.
>
> I do not recommend that anyone who has separate /usr "do nothing" at
> this point. Please re-read the second paragraph of the news item.
>
> Thanks,
>
> William
>

One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used
Mandrake.  It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one
reason I left Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either
but one reason I chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of
that.  Now, whether it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init
thingy just because someone doesn't want to put files where they should
be which is not inside /usr.

So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and
it fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.  I done
went down the road of trying to fix one of those stupid things and I
have no plan or desire to do so again.  I'm also not going to spend
hours reinstalling Gentoo either.  If, more than likely when, the init
thingy fails, I'll be installing something else and I'll most my last
sign off message here.  One thing about Linux, there are plenty of
distros to pick from .  I love Gentoo but I like to be able to boot up
without dealing with a init thingy that I have to fix when it goes belly
up.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Michael Hampicke]

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Am 28.09.2013 17:06, schrieb Dale:
> Michael Hampicke wrote:
>> Am 28.09.2013 13:32, schrieb Tanstaafl:
>>> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> No really,*why exactly*?
>>>
>>> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first
>>> set this system up many years ago.
>>>
>>
>> Where did you read that? According to the 2004 handbook the default
>> partition scheme was:
>>
>> Partition    Filesystem    Size    Description
>> /dev/hda1    ext2    32M    Boot partition
>> /dev/hda2    (swap)    512M    Swap partition
>> /dev/hda3    ext3    Rest of the disk    Root partition
>>
>>
>>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20040419042803/http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1
>>
> 
> I guess I got mine from the handbook back in early 2003.  That is when I
> did my first install.

This is the default partition scheme from 2001 according to the handbook :-)

Partition	Size	Type
boot partition, containing kernel(s) and boot information	~100
Megabytes	ReiserFS recommended, ext2 ok
root partition, containing main filesystem (/usr, /home, etc)	>=1.5
Gigabytes	ReiserFS recommended, ext2 ok
swap partition (no longer a 128 Megabyte limit)	>=128 Megabytes	Linux swap

No seperate /usr either

> 
> Also, as I stated, I have / and /boot on regular partitions and
> everything else on LVM.  Care to guess why I don't have / on a LVM too? 
> Yep, to avoid the init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM because grub
> didn't support it.
> 

I know that you want the avoid an initramfs given your experience from
mandrake lot's of years ago. The solution now is to merge /usr to / or
risk that one day your system won't boot.

I know that some changes are hard to overcome, but that does not mean
you can look away :-)


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 28.09.2013 16:04, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> On 28/09/2013 13:32, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> No really,*why exactly*?
>> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first
>> set this system up many years ago.
> This was something almost all of us recommended way back then. Lord only
> knows why we recommeded that.

I never knew. Something about 'saver as..' or something stupid.

>  Maybe it was small drives (which  didn't
> have), maybe it was different mount options (which I never did and never
> saw anyone else do either), or maybe it was for thin clients (which I
> only ever saw in use once - Shuttleworth labs in University of Cape Town).
>
> So why did we all (and I included myself) recommend this so much? Dude,
> I have no idea, but I *think* we were cargo-culting more than any other
> single factor.
>
>
>> I have no philosophical reason reason to stick with it, only a (maybe
>> irrational) fear of breaking things if I attempt to merge it back into /.
>>
>> This, combined with an intense (also maybe irrational) desire to avoid
>> like the plague using an initramfs, is why this decision to FORCE me
>> into a position of possibly having to break my system (either by a filed
>> attempt at merging /usr into /, or a failed attampt at using an initramfs).
> No-one is forcing you to do anything, the news item did not say that.
>
> It says that if you do it, the devs will not support you and you are on
> your own. It also says that in the dev's opinion, the day when you can
> no longer support it either is probably not too far away
>
>> I too sincerely hope eudev bypasses this issue.
> This has nothing to do with eudev, not with udev
>
>> The main thing about this that pisses me off is the lack of enough
>> warning... one month? Really? One month to compleyelt rebuild a seerver
>> that has been running flawlessly for many years, just because someone
>> doesn't like something that has been done for many years?
>
> First, it is not one month, it is much longer. We've all been whinging
> about the issue for most of this year. Two, why do you think you need to
> rebuild the entire machine? You don't need to do that just to merge two
> filesystems.
>
> To merge two filesystems, you just merge two filesystems. You don't
> rebuild anything. You might have some downtime though

one reboot. You cp everything into /newuser. On shutdown you unmount
/usr, mv newuser usr, sync, unmount, reboot.
if you want to do it 'old fashioned', you cp everything to /newuser,
reboot with systemrescuecd, mount / on /mnt/gentoo, my newuser to usr
and reboot. Oh, and change fstab.

Simple and boring.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

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Michael Hampicke wrote:
> Am 28.09.2013 17:06, schrieb Dale:
>> Michael Hampicke wrote:
>>> Am 28.09.2013 13:32, schrieb Tanstaafl:
>>>> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> No really,*why exactly*?
>>>>
>>>> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I
first
>>>> set this system up many years ago.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Where did you read that? According to the 2004 handbook the default
>>> partition scheme was:
>>>
>>> Partition    Filesystem    Size    Description
>>> /dev/hda1    ext2    32M    Boot partition
>>> /dev/hda2    (swap)    512M    Swap partition
>>> /dev/hda3    ext3    Rest of the disk    Root partition
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
http://web.archive.org/web/20040419042803/http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1
>>>
>>
>> I guess I got mine from the handbook back in early 2003.  That is when I
>> did my first install.
>
> This is the default partition scheme from 2001 according to the
handbook :-)
>
> Partition    Size    Type
> boot partition, containing kernel(s) and boot information    ~100
> Megabytes    ReiserFS recommended, ext2 ok
> root partition, containing main filesystem (/usr, /home, etc)    >=1.5
> Gigabytes    ReiserFS recommended, ext2 ok
> swap partition (no longer a 128 Megabyte limit)    >=128 Megabytes   
Linux swap
>
> No seperate /usr either

Well, it was there when I followed it otherwise, I wouldn't have known
to even do it.  I all but copy and pasted the instructions from the
install guide.

>
>
>>
>> Also, as I stated, I have / and /boot on regular partitions and
>> everything else on LVM.  Care to guess why I don't have / on a LVM too?
>> Yep, to avoid the init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM because grub
>> didn't support it.
>>
>
> I know that you want the avoid an initramfs given your experience from
> mandrake lot's of years ago. The solution now is to merge /usr to / or
> risk that one day your system won't boot.
>
> I know that some changes are hard to overcome, but that does not mean
> you can look away :-)
>

Yep, it could lead to some changes but the init thingy isn't the only
change it could lead too.  I said that before and I'll say it again, I'm
not going to start trying to pull my hair out over the init thingy. 
First time it fails, it's been fun.  I'll just move along to something
else.  I did it once a long time ago and am not so locked in that I
can't do it again.  See, I can change when needed.  It's not that I
don't want to learn new things, I just don't want to learn old failed
things.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, William.

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 11:01:59AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 07:32:20PM -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:57:06PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> > > Bruce Hill wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> > > >> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
> > > >> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale 
> > > > Do you have /usr separate from / ?

> > > Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
> > > this problem tho. 

> > > One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
> > > partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
> > > full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
> > > it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol 

> > > Dale

> > You need to read the blog post listed in the news item, as it's not just
> > specific to udev anymore.

> Bruce is correct; This issue is not specific to udev/eudev/mdev.

> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically for
> this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.

Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
<insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets patronising
really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I appreciate
that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else round here.)

No, this breaking of separate /usr was done by some specific project,
some specific person, even, in a supreme display of incompetence, malice,
or arrogance.  How come this project and this person have managed to
maintain such a low profile?  There seems to have been some sort of
conspiracy to do this breakage in secret, each member of the coven
pushing the plot until the damage was irrevocable.  Who was it?

> If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what the
> issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal with which
> software is considered critical for booting.

> There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
> have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you will
> need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.

"Only"?  ONLY???  You say that as though creating an initramfs were a
trifle, trivial, and of no moment.

An initramfs is a highly complicated, fragile contraption, and has all
the aesthetic appeal of a car crash.  It is a desperate expedient, an
ugly kludge, made necessary (for binary distributions) by the design
deficiencies of the Linux kernel.  Who in their right mind (other than a
specialist at a binary distribution) would want to spend evenings and
weekends battling this abortion just trying to get their machine to boot?
The alternative is to install some magic, effectively binary blob,
generated by genkernel or dracut or whatever.  Who knows what these blobs
will do during booting?

Consider how ridiculous booting Linux is.  Firstly, on power up, the bios
initialises then loads the program from the HDD's boot sector, namely
grub or lilo.  This loads its main part.  Then it loads the kernel,
which starts, then the init sequence.  Each element of this sequence can
be individually justified, but the whole lot together just look
incompetent - why can't the kernel just start?  And now, on top of all
this the conspirators want to force us to use an initramfs.

Ah yes, the deficiencies of the kernel.  It can only mount one file
system when it starts.  It's incapable of mounting LVM2 systems (even
though it contains LVM2 code).  It's incapable of mounting encrypted
partitions (even though it contains encryption code), ......  So because
of these holes, a system must either be constrained in it's makeup (as
mine is) or use an ugly hack.  It can (still) mount RAID partitions, I
suppose.

> I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs which I
> built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there.

Until, after some update, it reminds you of its presence by not booting
your machine.  That's the sort of excitement I can do without.

> I recommend that you familiarize yourself with genkernel or dracut and
> build an initramfs. Since nothing is changing until at least
> Nov 1, you can test your initramfs by adding an entry to your boot
> loader configuration that uses it and get it set up correctly while you
> can still fall back on booting without it.

> I do not recommend that anyone who has separate /usr "do nothing" at
> this point. Please re-read the second paragraph of the news item.

I dismantled my separate /usr partition some while ago in anticipation of
what has transpired.  Previously, it was in an LVM2 partition, where I'd
prefer it still to be.  Now, /usr is just in my root partition, /dev/md6.
At least RAID is still available.

> Thanks,

> William

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 20:11:06 +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

>  To merge two filesystems, you just merge two filesystems. You don't
> > rebuild anything. You might have some downtime though  
> 
> one reboot. You cp everything into /newuser. On shutdown you unmount
> /usr, mv newuser usr, sync, unmount, reboot.
> if you want to do it 'old fashioned', you cp everything to /newuser,
> reboot with systemrescuecd, mount / on /mnt/gentoo, my newuser to usr
> and reboot. Oh, and change fstab.

It's not that simple if /usr is on LVM, / is not large enough to
hold /usr and resizing the partition is really tricky. In that case, the
simplest option is to start using an initramfs. Once that is working, you
can get rid of the separate root partition and move that filesystem into
the VG too.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WinErr 004: Erroneous error - Nothing is wrong

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 12:31:57 -0500, Dale wrote:

> One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used
> Mandrake.  It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one
> reason I left Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either
> but one reason I chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of
> that.  Now, whether it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init
> thingy just because someone doesn't want to put files where they should
> be which is not inside /usr.

Mandrake used an initrd, not the same as an initramfs, which is directly
supported by the kernel.
 
> So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and
> it fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.

Good luck trying to find something else that doesn't use an init*.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WindowError:01B  Illegal error. Do NOT get this error.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> > I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> > unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
> > for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> > mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
> 
> Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
> separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
> <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
> patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
> appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
> round here.)

It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.

> No, this breaking of separate /usr was done by some specific project,
> some specific person, even, in a supreme display of incompetence,
> malice, or arrogance.  How come this project and this person have
> managed to maintain such a low profile?  There seems to have been some
> sort of conspiracy to do this breakage in secret, each member of the
> coven pushing the plot until the damage was irrevocable.  Who was it?

So which was it, one specific person or a coven of conspirators? This is
open source, secret conspiracies don't really work well. If this really
was such a bad move, do you really think the likes of Greg K-H would not
have stepped in? Or is he a conspirator too?

> > If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what
> > the issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal
> > with which software is considered critical for booting.
> 
> > There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
> > have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you
> > will need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.
> 
> "Only"?  ONLY???  You say that as though creating an initramfs were a
> trifle, trivial, and of no moment.

For an Ubuntu user, maybe that's true? For someone that feels cmfortable
compiling their own kernel and configuring the entire system by hand,
running dracut or genkernel should not be too demanding. Even creating
your own initramfs is hardly rocket science.

> Ah yes, the deficiencies of the kernel.  It can only mount one file
> system when it starts.  It's incapable of mounting LVM2 systems (even
> though it contains LVM2 code).  It's incapable of mounting encrypted
> partitions (even though it contains encryption code), ......  So because
> of these holes, a system must either be constrained in it's makeup (as
> mine is) or use an ugly hack.  It can (still) mount RAID partitions, I
> suppose.

That's plain wrong. The kernel doesn't not include LVM code, only the
device mapper functions that LVM uses, It does include RAID code.
 
> > I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs
> > which I built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is
> > there.
> 
> Until, after some update, it reminds you of its presence by not booting
> your machine.  That's the sort of excitement I can do without.

Do you have any examples of this actually happening? Not "I heard a bloke
down the pub talking about a mate of a mate who broke his system with an
initramfs" but actual documented examples of how this can occur in normal
use.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Become a gynaecologist, look up a friend today.

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[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 28/09/13 01:33, Dale wrote:
> Bruce Hill wrote:
>> mingdao@workstation ~ $ eselect news read
>> 2013-09-27-initramfs-required
>>    Title                     Separate /usr on Linux requires initramfs
>>    Author                    William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>
>>    Posted                    2013-09-27
>>    Revision                  1
>>
>> Linux systems which have / and /usr on separate file systems but do not
>> use an initramfs will not be supported starting on 01-Nov-2013.
>>  [...]
>
>
> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.  If
> I do, this could get interesting, again.

You do need to worry about this.  Actually, you always had to worry 
about this.  It's just that your specific configuration didn't blow up 
in a visible way.  You might had problems already in the past, just not 
apparent ones.  If you read the links posted in the announcement, you 
will see that the problem wasn't eudev or udev.  It's all the other 
software on your system.

eudev *cannot* fix that.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alon Bar-Lev]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 11:43 PM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/09/13 01:33, Dale wrote:
>>
>> Bruce Hill wrote:
>>>
>>> mingdao@workstation ~ $ eselect news read
>>> 2013-09-27-initramfs-required
>>>    Title                     Separate /usr on Linux requires initramfs
>>>    Author                    William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>
>>>    Posted                    2013-09-27
>>>    Revision                  1
>>>
>>> Linux systems which have / and /usr on separate file systems but do not
>>> use an initramfs will not be supported starting on 01-Nov-2013.
>>>  [...]
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.  If
>> I do, this could get interesting, again.
>
>
> You do need to worry about this.  Actually, you always had to worry about
> this.  It's just that your specific configuration didn't blow up in a
> visible way.  You might had problems already in the past, just not apparent
> ones.  If you read the links posted in the announcement, you will see that
> the problem wasn't eudev or udev.  It's all the other software on your
> system.
>
> eudev *cannot* fix that.
>

As far as I read, the problem is with bluetooth keyboards? and some
other devices and locales, which are minor for this decision of
removing supportability. Especially for servers and for most of
workstations. Most sane configuration can be supported with separate
/.

And of course there is the hidden systemd agenda, which is what I
suspect had more impact.

Regards,
Alon Bar-Lev.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan Mackenzie]

'evening, Neil.

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 09:17:02PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> > > I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> > > unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
> > > for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> > > mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.

> > Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
> > separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
> > <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
> > patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
> > appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
> > round here.)

> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
> increasing time needed to support what has now become an edge case.

That's precisely the sort of patronising comment I was complaining of in
my previous paragraph.  It isn't "evolution".  It has been a decision of
somebody to move it.  Who?

> > No, this breaking of separate /usr was done by some specific project,
> > some specific person, even, in a supreme display of incompetence,
> > malice, or arrogance.  How come this project and this person have
> > managed to maintain such a low profile?  There seems to have been some
> > sort of conspiracy to do this breakage in secret, each member of the
> > coven pushing the plot until the damage was irrevocable.  Who was it?

> So which was it, one specific person or a coven of conspirators? This is
> open source, secret conspiracies don't really work well. If this really
> was such a bad move, do you really think the likes of Greg K-H would not
> have stepped in? Or is he a conspirator too?

I know not how many people were involved.  Don't you think it noteworthy
that we on this group first learnt of the change when it had already
happened?  I have no idea whether people like GK-H would have been aware
of it either.

> > > If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what
> > > the issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal
> > > with which software is considered critical for booting.

> > > There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
> > > have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you
> > > will need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.

> > "Only"?  ONLY???  You say that as though creating an initramfs were a
> > trifle, trivial, and of no moment.

> For an Ubuntu user, maybe that's true? For someone that feels comfortable
> compiling their own kernel and configuring the entire system by hand,
> running dracut or genkernel should not be too demanding. Even creating
> your own initramfs is hardly rocket science.

It may or may not be demanding for any particular administrator.  It is
undoubtedly tedious and time consuming.  Installing RAID and LVM2 were
(for me) also time consuming, but at least I got something worthwhile out
of them in the end.  Creating an initramfs is a lot of work just to end
up in the same place.

> > Ah yes, the deficiencies of the kernel.  It can only mount one file
> > system when it starts.  It's incapable of mounting LVM2 systems (even
> > though it contains LVM2 code).  It's incapable of mounting encrypted
> > partitions (even though it contains encryption code), ......  So because
> > of these holes, a system must either be constrained in it's makeup (as
> > mine is) or use an ugly hack.  It can (still) mount RAID partitions, I
> > suppose.

> That's plain wrong. The kernel doesn't include LVM code, only the
> device mapper functions that LVM uses, It does include RAID code.

> > > I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs
> > > which I built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is
> > > there.

> > Until, after some update, it reminds you of its presence by not booting
> > your machine.  That's the sort of excitement I can do without.

> Do you have any examples of this actually happening? Not "I heard a bloke
> down the pub talking about a mate of a mate who broke his system with an
> initramfs" but actual documented examples of how this can occur in normal
> use.

There have been several times in the past few years when precisely that
could have happened in Gentoo - the updating of the Baselayout in 2011,
the various shenanigans with udev, for example.  Dale's former system
broke because of an initrd.  I get nervous every time something like lvm
get updated.

> -- 
> Neil Bothwick

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

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Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 12:31:57 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>> One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used
>> Mandrake.  It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one
>> reason I left Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either
>> but one reason I chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of
>> that.  Now, whether it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init
>> thingy just because someone doesn't want to put files where they should
>> be which is not inside /usr.
>
> Mandrake used an initrd, not the same as an initramfs, which is directly
> supported by the kernel.
> 

Whichever.  Same shoes, different color is all.

>
>> So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and
>> it fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.
>
> Good luck trying to find something else that doesn't use an init*.
>
>

Thing is, those others are a LOT faster to install.  Heck, I got
Mandrake down to like 30 minutes from booting CD to booting off the hard
drive and logging in and that was a COMPLETE install too.  I installed
Kubuntu for my brother and while not Gentoo, he doesn't have issues. 
Kubuntu takes care of the init thingy, NOT ME.  If it did break,
reinstall and go back to surfing.  It fails on Gentoo, I'm stuck.  I'm
installing something and it won't be spending a good day to two days
installing Gentoo.

It seems folks think I just don't like new stuff.  I don't mind new
stuff.  I use new stuff quite often.  I just don't like using stuff that
breaks, switching to something else to get away from it, then turn right
around and have the same broken junk thrown back at me.  One downside
for Gentoo in that case, the install takes tiime and effort.  It's not
point and click.  I love Gentoo but I'm not in love with installing on a
regular basis whenever something breaks and I can't fix it or get booted
to where I can at least try to find out HOW to fix it.  That is the key
problem.  If I can't boot, I can't google or post here or anywhere
else.  I know how to fix that tho.  I'm sure I can find something that
will boot in somewhat short order.  Question is, what will it be?

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

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Neil Bothwick wrote:
> Do you have any examples of this actually happening? Not "I heard a bloke down the pub talking
about a mate of a mate who broke his system with an initramfs" but
actual documented examples of how this can occur in normal use.

You can start with me.  That is what I kept running into is the init
thingy failing.  I would reinstall and it would work for a while but
would eventually give some sort of error and crap out.  So to answer
your question, I can say MYSELF that this EXACT thing has happened.  It
also happened on a very popular distro at that.  Mandrake at the time. 
It wasn't just once, it was many times.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 28/09/2013 22:58, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> As far as I read, the problem is with bluetooth keyboards? and some
> other devices and locales, which are minor for this decision of
> removing supportability. Especially for servers and for most of
> workstations. Most sane configuration can be supported with separate
> /.
> 
> And of course there is the hidden systemd agenda, which is what I
> suspect had more impact.

No, the problem is not bluetooth keyboards per se. That just happens to
be a convenient example of the kind of problem anticipated. There is a
tendency to use it as the only example, which reinforces the idea that
BT keyboards are problem to be solved.

The actual problem is better stated something like this:

In the early stages of user-land setup (around the time when udev is
getting it's act together), arbitrary code can run and that code can be
in any arbitrary place, but there is no guarantee that that code is even
accessible at the point when it is needed. The actual cause of this mess
is the lack of standards on where to put stuff on Linux systems, and it
forms a classic bootstrap problem.

There has only ever been one way around that problem - define an exact
entry point that is guaranteed to be in a specific state. For current
userland this effectively means that everything that has traditionally
been in bin, sbin and lib in / and /usr must be available as step 1.
Technically, you could include /var/lib/ and maybe even /opt in there.
but we can safely exclude those at this time as only a brain-dead moron
would ever put init-critical code there.

It's a fact of history that Linux packager and package devs have never
managed to make up their minds where to put stuff. Just have a look at
coreutils binaries - why are 60% of them in /usr? It's coreutils! And
core isn't in the name because of a whim.

So you have two choices: enforce a decent separation so that the problem
doesn't happen, or enforce that all binaries are in one place where we
can call it "the system". Every major OS out there does the latter, it's
only Linux that tolerates this free for all wild wild west approach of
stick anything anywhere and still expect it to work. Hint: it doesn't
work. Duct-tape and bubblegum don't actually hold stuff together, no
matter how much we try convince ourselves it does.

This should actually have been done when MAKEDEV was phased out in
favour of the now-defunct devfs, but it's never too late to fix design
flaws that date back 30 years or more.

So this brings us back to the essential technical problem that still
needs to be solved on your machines:

/usr needs to be available (and not only for BT keyboards) at the
earliest possible opportunity - this is a technical constraint. To
guarantee that, you need to either merge /usr with /, or use an
initramfs to guarantee that /usr is available before anything else
happens in userland.

It *really* is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
two choices, then I am all ears.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 21:09:38 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> 'evening, Neil.

> > It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction,
> > now it has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer
> > devote the increasing time needed to support what has now become an
> > edge case.
> 
> That's precisely the sort of patronising comment I was complaining of in
> my previous paragraph.

In what way is it patronising?

> It isn't "evolution".  It has been a decision of
> somebody to move it.  Who?

It hasn't been a single decision. The situation has been developing for
some time, with each distro making its own decision. Most other distros
made the decision some time ago, The Gentoo devs have only recently
agreed that supporting that particular setup (separate /usr without an
initramfs) was not a good use of their time. The important point is it is
their time and therefore their decision.

> > > No, this breaking of separate /usr was done by some specific
> > > project, some specific person, even, in a supreme display of
> > > incompetence, malice, or arrogance.  How come this project and this
> > > person have managed to maintain such a low profile?  There seems to
> > > have been some sort of conspiracy to do this breakage in secret,
> > > each member of the coven pushing the plot until the damage was
> > > irrevocable.  Who was it?
> 
> > So which was it, one specific person or a coven of conspirators? This
> > is open source, secret conspiracies don't really work well. If this
> > really was such a bad move, do you really think the likes of Greg K-H
> > would not have stepped in? Or is he a conspirator too?
> 
> I know not how many people were involved.  Don't you think it noteworthy
> that we on this group first learnt of the change when it had already
> happened?  I have no idea whether people like GK-H would have been aware
> of it either.

I think that is entirely the right time to learn of it. If you want to
know about the devs' discussions before reaching the decision, you
should read gentoo-dev. Until then it was a dev issue, now it is being
implemented it is a user issue.

> > > "Only"?  ONLY???  You say that as though creating an initramfs were
> > > a trifle, trivial, and of no moment.
> 
> > For an Ubuntu user, maybe that's true? For someone that feels
> > comfortable compiling their own kernel and configuring the entire
> > system by hand, running dracut or genkernel should not be too
> > demanding. Even creating your own initramfs is hardly rocket science.
> 
> It may or may not be demanding for any particular administrator.  It is
> undoubtedly tedious and time consuming.

I disagree, but then I have actually tried doing it.

> > > Until, after some update, it reminds you of its presence by not
> > > booting your machine.  That's the sort of excitement I can do
> > > without.
> 
> > Do you have any examples of this actually happening? Not "I heard a
> > bloke down the pub talking about a mate of a mate who broke his
> > system with an initramfs" but actual documented examples of how this
> > can occur in normal use.
> 
> There have been several times in the past few years when precisely that
> could have happened in Gentoo - the updating of the Baselayout in 2011,
> the various shenanigans with udev, for example.

"Could have happened", I'll take that as a "no".

This whole discussion reminds me of a conversation I had with a senior
SUSE engineer earlier this year, someone of a similar age to myself. His
comment was along the lines of "I remember when Linux users wanted the
latest bleeding edge, now they complain every time something changes".


-- 
Neil Bothwick

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Mom.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 28/09/2013 20:18, Dale wrote:
> Yep, it could lead to some changes but the init thingy isn't the only
> change it could lead too.  I said that before and I'll say it again, I'm
> not going to start trying to pull my hair out over the init thingy. 
> First time it fails, it's been fun.  I'll just move along to something
> else.  I did it once a long time ago and am not so locked in that I
> can't do it again.  See, I can change when needed.  It's not that I
> don't want to learn new things, I just don't want to learn old failed
> things.

Then you need to move to FreeBSD. That does what you want for this
limited case. No Linux will do it. Well, maybe LFS.

Good luck coming to terms with FreeBSD though. It will feel like
2003-era Gentoo, without portage.

This is a lot like coming to terms with electronic ignitions after 30
years of dealing with points. Feels painful. But only until you start
noticing vastly extended plug life and a much better fuel economy.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 17:15:41 -0500, Dale wrote:

> Neil Bothwick wrote:

> > Mandrake used an initrd, not the same as an initramfs, which is
> > directly supported by the kernel.

> Whichever.  Same shoes, different color is all.

Read the kernel docs on initramfs, you'll then understand that this is
not true.

> > Good luck trying to find something else that doesn't use an init*.

> Thing is, those others are a LOT faster to install.  Heck, I got
> Mandrake down to like 30 minutes from booting CD to booting off the hard
> drive and logging in and that was a COMPLETE install too.  I installed
> Kubuntu for my brother and while not Gentoo, he doesn't have issues. 
> Kubuntu takes care of the init thingy, NOT ME.  If it did break,
> reinstall and go back to surfing.  It fails on Gentoo, I'm stuck.  I'm
> installing something and it won't be spending a good day to two days
> installing Gentoo.

Except you can never break Gentoo with a kernel update because, unlike
some other distros, installing a new kernel does not uninstall the
previous one. No matter how badly wrng a kernel update goes, you can
always hit reset then select the old one from the GRUB menu -
reinstallation doesn't come into it.

> It seems folks think I just don't like new stuff.  I don't mind new
> stuff.  I use new stuff quite often.  I just don't like using stuff that
> breaks, switching to something else to get away from it, then turn right
> around and have the same broken junk thrown back at me.

Except it's not the same. How long ago did you switch? You've been around
here for a while, I suspect your Mandrake experience with with a 2.4
kernel, which didn't have initramfs available, and initrd. The 2.6
kernel's initramfs was developed to address the problems with initrds.

This isn't even as close as comparing apples and oranges.


> I'm sure I can find something that
> will boot in somewhat short order.  Question is, what will it be?

vmlinuz.old :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Power outage at a department store yesterday, Twenty people were
trapped on the escalators.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 28/09/2013 21:50, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 20:11:06 +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> 
>>  To merge two filesystems, you just merge two filesystems. You don't
>>> rebuild anything. You might have some downtime though  
>>
>> one reboot. You cp everything into /newuser. On shutdown you unmount
>> /usr, mv newuser usr, sync, unmount, reboot.
>> if you want to do it 'old fashioned', you cp everything to /newuser,
>> reboot with systemrescuecd, mount / on /mnt/gentoo, my newuser to usr
>> and reboot. Oh, and change fstab.
> 
> It's not that simple if /usr is on LVM, / is not large enough to
> hold /usr and resizing the partition is really tricky. In that case, the
> simplest option is to start using an initramfs. Once that is working, you
> can get rid of the separate root partition and move that filesystem into
> the VG too.


First time I did it, I faced that scenario too:

/ wasn't big enough and I didn't have enough free space anywhere to put
a temporary copy. So I juggled everything around in chunks playing the
disk-partition equivalent of 15-pieces. Took about a day.

What I *should* have done is bought my first external USB drive then,
not three years later.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 17:15:41 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>> Mandrake used an initrd, not the same as an initramfs, which is
>>> directly supported by the kernel.
>> Whichever.  Same shoes, different color is all.
> Read the kernel docs on initramfs, you'll then understand that this is
> not true.

Point is, they are the same to me.  Both stand between grub and the
kernel and add yet one more point of failure.  I'm not going to nitpck
on the difference between them since I view both in the same way. 


>>> Good luck trying to find something else that doesn't use an init*.
>> Thing is, those others are a LOT faster to install.  Heck, I got
>> Mandrake down to like 30 minutes from booting CD to booting off the hard
>> drive and logging in and that was a COMPLETE install too.  I installed
>> Kubuntu for my brother and while not Gentoo, he doesn't have issues. 
>> Kubuntu takes care of the init thingy, NOT ME.  If it did break,
>> reinstall and go back to surfing.  It fails on Gentoo, I'm stuck.  I'm
>> installing something and it won't be spending a good day to two days
>> installing Gentoo.
> Except you can never break Gentoo with a kernel update because, unlike
> some other distros, installing a new kernel does not uninstall the
> previous one. No matter how badly wrng a kernel update goes, you can
> always hit reset then select the old one from the GRUB menu -
> reinstallation doesn't come into it.

Provided that the old one works tho right?  What if I update and it
breaks more than one thing?   Then what? 

Again, if I can't boot, I can't get help fixing it.  If I can't fix it,
I'll fix it by installing something else.  That decision has already
been made when this mess started a LONG time ago. 


>> It seems folks think I just don't like new stuff.  I don't mind new
>> stuff.  I use new stuff quite often.  I just don't like using stuff that
>> breaks, switching to something else to get away from it, then turn right
>> around and have the same broken junk thrown back at me.
> Except it's not the same. How long ago did you switch? You've been around
> here for a while, I suspect your Mandrake experience with with a 2.4
> kernel, which didn't have initramfs available, and initrd. The 2.6
> kernel's initramfs was developed to address the problems with initrds.
>
> This isn't even as close as comparing apples and oranges.
>

To ME, a init thingy is a init thingy.  That's why I call them all init
thingys.  To ME, both are apples.  One may be green and another red but
both are still apples. 

>> I'm sure I can find something that
>> will boot in somewhat short order.  Question is, what will it be?
> vmlinuz.old :)
>
>

Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam around and
test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is, I already have a
starting point. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 00:36, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> On 28/09/2013 22:58, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
>> As far as I read, the problem is with bluetooth keyboards? and some
>> other devices and locales, which are minor for this decision of
>> removing supportability. Especially for servers and for most of
>> workstations. Most sane configuration can be supported with separate
>> /.
>>
>> And of course there is the hidden systemd agenda, which is what I
>> suspect had more impact.
> No, the problem is not bluetooth keyboards per se. That just happens to
> be a convenient example of the kind of problem anticipated. There is a
> tendency to use it as the only example, which reinforces the idea that
> BT keyboards are problem to be solved.
>
> The actual problem is better stated something like this:
>
> In the early stages of user-land setup (around the time when udev is
> getting it's act together), arbitrary code can run and that code can be
> in any arbitrary place, but there is no guarantee that that code is even
> accessible at the point when it is needed. The actual cause of this mess
> is the lack of standards on where to put stuff on Linux systems, and it
> forms a classic bootstrap problem.
>
> There has only ever been one way around that problem - define an exact
> entry point that is guaranteed to be in a specific state. For current
> userland this effectively means that everything that has traditionally
> been in bin, sbin and lib in / and /usr must be available as step 1.
> Technically, you could include /var/lib/ and maybe even /opt in there.
> but we can safely exclude those at this time as only a brain-dead moron
> would ever put init-critical code there.
>
> It's a fact of history that Linux packager and package devs have never
> managed to make up their minds where to put stuff. Just have a look at
> coreutils binaries - why are 60% of them in /usr? It's coreutils! And
> core isn't in the name because of a whim.
>
> So you have two choices: enforce a decent separation so that the problem
> doesn't happen, or enforce that all binaries are in one place where we
> can call it "the system". Every major OS out there does the latter, it's
> only Linux that tolerates this free for all wild wild west approach of
> stick anything anywhere and still expect it to work. Hint: it doesn't
> work. Duct-tape and bubblegum don't actually hold stuff together, no
> matter how much we try convince ourselves it does.
>
> This should actually have been done when MAKEDEV was phased out in
> favour of the now-defunct devfs, but it's never too late to fix design
> flaws that date back 30 years or more.
>
> So this brings us back to the essential technical problem that still
> needs to be solved on your machines:
>
> /usr needs to be available (and not only for BT keyboards) at the
> earliest possible opportunity - this is a technical constraint. To
> guarantee that, you need to either merge /usr with /, or use an
> initramfs to guarantee that /usr is available before anything else
> happens in userland.
>
> It *really* is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
> two choices, then I am all ears.
>
>

the correct and simple solution would be to deprecate /usr and move
everything into / .

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[pk]

On 2013-09-29 01:23, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

> the correct and simple solution would be to deprecate /usr and move
> everything into / .

Install Windows and be done with it, I say.

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

pk wrote:
> On 2013-09-29 01:23, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> the correct and simple solution would be to deprecate /usr and move
>> everything into / .
> Install Windows and be done with it, I say.
>
> Best regards
>
> Peter K
>
>
>


Next, we'll have to have C: even tho we never had to have one before. 
ROFLMBO

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 01:23, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>> It *really* is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
>> > two choices, then I am all ears.
>> >
>> >
> the correct and simple solution would be to deprecate /usr and move
> everything into / .
> 
> 

I did consider that, but gave up on the idea as not workable. Sure, it
would work great and did work very well for Android and MacOS, both
controlled environments.

But doing it gains you nothing really apart from a crap load of stuff
cluttering up /, thinks like local, games and share.

But hey, maybe we can go right back to the originsl and put /home where
it started: /usr/people

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 02:01, Dale wrote:
> pk wrote:
>> On 2013-09-29 01:23, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>
>>> the correct and simple solution would be to deprecate /usr and move
>>> everything into / .
>> Install Windows and be done with it, I say.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Peter K
>>
>>
>>
> 
> 
> Next, we'll have to have C: even tho we never had to have one before. 
> ROFLMBO
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 
> 


You can have a C any time you want, all you need is a simple

s#/#C#g

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[pk]

On 2013-09-29 02:01, Dale wrote:

> Next, we'll have to have C: even tho we never had to have one before. 
> ROFLMBO

I would hesitate to laugh because that's where Linux is heading... And
Alan and other's are right in that it's not udevs problem per se; it's
all the half-desktop services[1]/applications that requires access to
the libs in /usr for some unknown reason. This will (eventually) affect
any operating system (even FreeBSD) that want to run things like, say,
Gnome. This is feature creep on steroids.

I just wish there was this simple system that would look like this:

boot loader -> operating system -> applications

...with a clear separation/well defined interfaces between them. Used to
think Linux was a good compromise but not anymore... What you have now
is something monstrous where application libs are part of the operating
system. Hence the requirement of no separate /usr. At least if you run
any of those things (like PAM - if some module require access to
PKCS#11, Kerberos, Consolekit etc.). Personally I wouldn't touch them...

In my opinion, this has gone way beyond what used to be called
"spaghetti code" and into what I would like to call "spaghetti system".

[1] Used to be called daemons but now people have adopted the Windows
name for it.

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 07:01:56PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> 
> Next, we'll have to have C: even tho we never had to have one before. 
> ROFLMBO
> 
> Dale

We already have it, just we don't have to CAPITALIZE c:

mingdao@workstation ~ $ ls -l .wine/drive_c/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  6 mingdao mingdao  107 May 16 08:46 Program Files
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao mingdao  529 Nov  1  2012 teamviewer.html
drwxr-xr-x  4 mingdao mingdao   33 Nov  1  2012 users
drwxr-xr-x 14 mingdao mingdao 4096 Sep 20 11:41 windows

But, seriously; our Linux desktop systems are so far behind Windows it really
makes us look bad. We kick tail in the server market, but that's it.
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Greg Woodbury]

To answer Alan's question - the main fault lies on the GNOME project and 
the forcing for systemd down user's systems throats.

Additionally, as certina things were added to Linux to "enhance" 
capabilities, the GNOME developers (apparently) *deliberately* placed 
the programs in /usr/bin, instead of in the generally accepted place of 
/bin.

Alan is correct - there is a deliberate cause of this debacle.  Certain 
folks (Lennart being one of many) *are* cramming their vision of Linux 
on the whole community.

I have read severl folks defending their ignoring of the old protocol of 
placing boot-required programs in /bin (and hence on root) as being 
holdovers from "ancient history" and claiming that disk space is so 
cheap these days that it "isn't necessary" to keep this distinction.

As a result of the GNOMEish forcing, some distros have even gone so far 
as to *do away* with /bin - and have placed everything in /usr/bin with 
compatibility symlinks as a holdover/workaround.

I lay this at the feet of GNOME, and thus, at the feet of RedHat.

Linux used to be about *choice*  aand leaving up to the users/admins 
about how they wanted to configure their systems.  But certain forces in 
the Linux marketplace are hell-bent on imitating Microsoft's "one way to 
do it" thinking that they are outdoing the "evil empire's" evilness.

I fully understand systemd and see that it is a solution seeking a 
problem to solve.  And its developers, being nearly identical with the 
set of GNOME developers, are forcing this *thing* on the Linux universe.

Certainly, the SystemV init system needed to have a way of 
*automagically/automatically* handling a wider set of dependencies. When 
we wrote if for System IV at Bell Labs in 1981 or so, we didn't have the 
time to solve the problem of having the computer handle the dependencies 
and moved the handling out to the human mind to solve by setting the 
numerical sequence numbers.  (I was one of the writers for System IV 
init while a contractor.)

OpenRC provided a highly compatible and organic extension of the system, 
and Gentoo has been happy for severl years with it.  But now, the same 
folks who are thrusting GNOME/systemd down the throats of systems 
everywhere, have invaded or gained converts enought in the Gentoo 
structure to try and force their way on Gentoo.

Gentoo may be flexible enough to allow someone to write an overlay that 
moves the necessary things back to /bin (and install symlinks from 
/usr/bin to /bin) so that an initrd/initramfs is not required.  But I 
suspect that Gentoo and many distributions are too far gone down the 
path of deception to recover.

Neil and other may disagree with this assessment, but I saw it coming 
and this is not the first time it has been pointed out - and not just by me.

Who knows though? I may just have to abandon prepared distributions 
completely and do a Linux From Scratch solution, or fork some distro and 
tey to undo the worst of the damage.

-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury
redwolfe@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:48:11AM -0400, Greg Woodbury wrote:
> 
> To answer Alan's question - the main fault lies on the GNOME project and 
> the forcing for systemd down user's systems throats.
> 
> Additionally, as certina things were added to Linux to "enhance" 
> capabilities, the GNOME developers (apparently) *deliberately* placed 
> the programs in /usr/bin, instead of in the generally accepted place of 
> /bin.
> 
> Alan is correct - there is a deliberate cause of this debacle.  Certain 
> folks (Lennart being one of many) *are* cramming their vision of Linux 
> on the whole community.
> 
> I have read severl folks defending their ignoring of the old protocol of 
> placing boot-required programs in /bin (and hence on root) as being 
> holdovers from "ancient history" and claiming that disk space is so 
> cheap these days that it "isn't necessary" to keep this distinction.
> 
> As a result of the GNOMEish forcing, some distros have even gone so far 
> as to *do away* with /bin - and have placed everything in /usr/bin with 
> compatibility symlinks as a holdover/workaround.
> 
> I lay this at the feet of GNOME, and thus, at the feet of RedHat.
> 
> Linux used to be about *choice*  aand leaving up to the users/admins 
> about how they wanted to configure their systems.  But certain forces in 
> the Linux marketplace are hell-bent on imitating Microsoft's "one way to 
> do it" thinking that they are outdoing the "evil empire's" evilness.
> 
> I fully understand systemd and see that it is a solution seeking a 
> problem to solve.  And its developers, being nearly identical with the 
> set of GNOME developers, are forcing this *thing* on the Linux universe.
> 
> Certainly, the SystemV init system needed to have a way of 
> *automagically/automatically* handling a wider set of dependencies. When 
> we wrote if for System IV at Bell Labs in 1981 or so, we didn't have the 
> time to solve the problem of having the computer handle the dependencies 
> and moved the handling out to the human mind to solve by setting the 
> numerical sequence numbers.  (I was one of the writers for System IV 
> init while a contractor.)
> 
> OpenRC provided a highly compatible and organic extension of the system, 
> and Gentoo has been happy for severl years with it.  But now, the same 
> folks who are thrusting GNOME/systemd down the throats of systems 
> everywhere, have invaded or gained converts enought in the Gentoo 
> structure to try and force their way on Gentoo.
> 
> Gentoo may be flexible enough to allow someone to write an overlay that 
> moves the necessary things back to /bin (and install symlinks from 
> /usr/bin to /bin) so that an initrd/initramfs is not required.  But I 
> suspect that Gentoo and many distributions are too far gone down the 
> path of deception to recover.
> 
> Neil and other may disagree with this assessment, but I saw it coming 
> and this is not the first time it has been pointed out - and not just by me.
> 
> Who knows though? I may just have to abandon prepared distributions 
> completely and do a Linux From Scratch solution, or fork some distro and 
> tey to undo the worst of the damage.
> 
> -- 
> G.Wolfe Woodbury
> redwolfe@gmail.com

And that, folks, is the best and most accurate summary I've read to date.

Thank you, sir, for stepping up to the plate.

A friend of mine has his own Linux distro (has for a long time), and explained
this to me some time ago. He's not effected by this.

Bruce
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Walter Dnes]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 06:09:40PM -0500, Dale wrote

> Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam around
> and test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is, I already
> have a starting point.

  I'm already looking. http://forums.funtoo.org/viewtopic.php?id=2265
and they also dislike systemd.  I think I could get to like it.  See
also http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:36:43AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote

> The actual problem is better stated something like this:
> 
> In the early stages of user-land setup (around the time when udev is
> getting it's act together), arbitrary code can run and that code can be
> in any arbitrary place, but there is no guarantee that that code is even
> accessible at the point when it is needed. The actual cause of this mess
> is the lack of standards on where to put stuff on Linux systems, and it
> forms a classic bootstrap problem.
> 
> There has only ever been one way around that problem - define an exact
> entry point that is guaranteed to be in a specific state. For current
> userland this effectively means that everything that has traditionally
> been in bin, sbin and lib in / and /usr must be available as step 1.
> Technically, you could include /var/lib/ and maybe even /opt in there.
> but we can safely exclude those at this time as only a brain-dead moron
> would ever put init-critical code there.

  Separate /usr worked for many years, even with udev.  The question I
have is why is udev *NOW* monkeying around with a whole bunch of
additional stuff before mounting partitions?  If you have an NFS-mounted
/usr, I can see needing to have network services running first.  Ditto
for /usr being in an LVM or encrypted partition, you need LVM and/or
decryption running first.  There is no excuse for anything else breaking
a separate /usr.

  Then again, separate /usr isn't the first thing Kay Sievers has broken
since he took over udev, and I wouldn't be surprised if he one day "just
happens to break openrc"...

https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/2/303

> From	Linus Torvalds <>
> Date	Tue, 2 Oct 2012 09:33:03 -0700
> Subject Re: udev breakages - was: Re: Need of an ".async_probe()"
> type of callback at driver's core - Was: Re: [PATCH] [media] drxk:
> change it to use request_firmware_nowait()
	

> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 6:03 AM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab
> <mchehab@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > I basically tried a few different approaches, including deferred
> > probe(), as you suggested, and request_firmware_async(), as Kay
> > suggested.
>
> Stop this crazy. FIX UDEV ALREADY, DAMMIT.
>
> Who maintains udev these days? Is it Lennart/Kai, as part of systemd?
>
> Lennart/Kai, fix the udev regression already. Lennart was the one
> who brought up kernel ABI regressions at some conference, and if
> you now you have the *gall* to break udev in an incompatible manner
> that requires basically impossible kernel changes for the kernel to
> "fix" the udev interface, I don't know what to say.
> 
> "Two-faced lying weasel" would be the most polite thing I could say.
> But it almost certainly will involve a lot of cursing.
>
> > However, for 3.7 or 3.8, I think that the better is to revert
> > changeset 177bc7dade38b5 and to stop with udev's insanity of
> > requiring asynchronous firmware load during device driver
> > initialization. If udev's developers are not willing to do that,
> > we'll likely need to  add something at the drivers core to trick
> > udev for it to think that the modules got probed before the probe
> > actually happens.
> 
> The fact is, udev made new - and insane - rules that are simply
> *invalid*. Modern udev is broken, and needs to be fixed.
> 
> I don't know where the problem started in udev, but the report I
> saw was that udev175 was fine, and udev182 was broken, and would
> deadlock if module_init() did a request_firmware(). That kind of
> nested behavior is absolutely *required* to work, in order to not
> cause idiotic problems for the kernel for no good reason.
> 
> What kind of insane udev maintainership do we have? And can we fix it?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 657 bytes --]

On Sunday 29 Sep 2013 06:29:37 Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 06:09:40PM -0500, Dale wrote
> 
> > Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam around
> > and test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is, I already
> > have a starting point.
> 
>   I'm already looking. http://forums.funtoo.org/viewtopic.php?id=2265
> and they also dislike systemd.  I think I could get to like it.  See
> also http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34

Very interesting!  This looks as a logical way to put udev back in its 
userspace box and stop it breaking the OS, or did I understand it incorrectly?

-- 
Regards,
Mick

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 490 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 10:25, Mick wrote:
> On Sunday 29 Sep 2013 06:29:37 Walter Dnes wrote:
>> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 06:09:40PM -0500, Dale wrote
>>
>>> Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam around
>>> and test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is, I already
>>> have a starting point.
>>
>>   I'm already looking. http://forums.funtoo.org/viewtopic.php?id=2265
>> and they also dislike systemd.  I think I could get to like it.  See
>> also http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34
> 
> Very interesting!  This looks as a logical way to put udev back in its 
> userspace box and stop it breaking the OS, or did I understand it incorrectly?
> 

Exherbo might be worth a look too[1].

It's a sort-of Gentoo fork using the portage tree and PMS; plus Ciaran
strikes me as the kind of guy who *would* expend massive effort to find
a way round current udev and systemd.


[1] I didn't look myself. I have no idea what Exherbo's stance is on
this matter.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Bruce Hill wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:48:11AM -0400, Greg Woodbury wrote:
>> To answer Alan's question - the main fault lies on the GNOME project and 
>> the forcing for systemd down user's systems throats.
>>
>> Additionally, as certina things were added to Linux to "enhance" 
>> capabilities, the GNOME developers (apparently) *deliberately* placed 
>> the programs in /usr/bin, instead of in the generally accepted place of 
>> /bin.
>>
>> Alan is correct - there is a deliberate cause of this debacle.  Certain 
>> folks (Lennart being one of many) *are* cramming their vision of Linux 
>> on the whole community.
>>
>> I have read severl folks defending their ignoring of the old protocol of 
>> placing boot-required programs in /bin (and hence on root) as being 
>> holdovers from "ancient history" and claiming that disk space is so 
>> cheap these days that it "isn't necessary" to keep this distinction.
>>
>> As a result of the GNOMEish forcing, some distros have even gone so far 
>> as to *do away* with /bin - and have placed everything in /usr/bin with 
>> compatibility symlinks as a holdover/workaround.
>>
>> I lay this at the feet of GNOME, and thus, at the feet of RedHat.
>>
>> Linux used to be about *choice*  aand leaving up to the users/admins 
>> about how they wanted to configure their systems.  But certain forces in 
>> the Linux marketplace are hell-bent on imitating Microsoft's "one way to 
>> do it" thinking that they are outdoing the "evil empire's" evilness.
>>
>> I fully understand systemd and see that it is a solution seeking a 
>> problem to solve.  And its developers, being nearly identical with the 
>> set of GNOME developers, are forcing this *thing* on the Linux universe.
>>
>> Certainly, the SystemV init system needed to have a way of 
>> *automagically/automatically* handling a wider set of dependencies. When 
>> we wrote if for System IV at Bell Labs in 1981 or so, we didn't have the 
>> time to solve the problem of having the computer handle the dependencies 
>> and moved the handling out to the human mind to solve by setting the 
>> numerical sequence numbers.  (I was one of the writers for System IV 
>> init while a contractor.)
>>
>> OpenRC provided a highly compatible and organic extension of the system, 
>> and Gentoo has been happy for severl years with it.  But now, the same 
>> folks who are thrusting GNOME/systemd down the throats of systems 
>> everywhere, have invaded or gained converts enought in the Gentoo 
>> structure to try and force their way on Gentoo.
>>
>> Gentoo may be flexible enough to allow someone to write an overlay that 
>> moves the necessary things back to /bin (and install symlinks from 
>> /usr/bin to /bin) so that an initrd/initramfs is not required.  But I 
>> suspect that Gentoo and many distributions are too far gone down the 
>> path of deception to recover.
>>
>> Neil and other may disagree with this assessment, but I saw it coming 
>> and this is not the first time it has been pointed out - and not just by me.
>>
>> Who knows though? I may just have to abandon prepared distributions 
>> completely and do a Linux From Scratch solution, or fork some distro and 
>> tey to undo the worst of the damage.
>>
>> -- 
>> G.Wolfe Woodbury
>> redwolfe@gmail.com
> And that, folks, is the best and most accurate summary I've read to date.
>
> Thank you, sir, for stepping up to the plate.
>
> A friend of mine has his own Linux distro (has for a long time), and explained
> this to me some time ago. He's not effected by this.
>
> Bruce

Name that distro please.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[pk]

On 2013-09-29 08:06, Walter Dnes wrote:

>> What kind of insane udev maintainership do we have? And can we fix it?

By starting from scratch and putting it in the kernel (which will stop
people from being too "creative" as well, since Linus will not allow
things to break so easily). The BSDs, MacOS and Plan 9 kernels can do
it[1], why not Linux? Well, one can wish at least... :-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devfs#Implementations

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 539 bytes --]

On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 02:06:34 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

> for /usr being in an LVM or encrypted partition, you need LVM and/or
> decryption running first.

Why would you want /usr encrypted but not /? There is nothing private
in /usr, but /etc/ contains password files.

I have used a separate usr in the past to do it the other way round,
encrypted / but unencrypted /usr (to lower processor usage on a netbook)
but that requires an initramfs anyway.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Justify my text? I'm sorry but it has no excuse.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 10:28, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> On 29/09/2013 10:25, Mick wrote:
>> On Sunday 29 Sep 2013 06:29:37 Walter Dnes wrote:
>>> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 06:09:40PM -0500, Dale wrote
>>>
>>>> Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam around
>>>> and test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is, I already
>>>> have a starting point.
>>>   I'm already looking. http://forums.funtoo.org/viewtopic.php?id=2265
>>> and they also dislike systemd.  I think I could get to like it.  See
>>> also http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34
>> Very interesting!  This looks as a logical way to put udev back in its 
>> userspace box and stop it breaking the OS, or did I understand it incorrectly?
>>
> Exherbo might be worth a look too[1].
>
> It's a sort-of Gentoo fork using the portage tree and PMS; plus Ciaran
> strikes me as the kind of guy who *would* expend massive effort to find
> a way round current udev and systemd.
>
>
> [1] I didn't look myself. I have no idea what Exherbo's stance is on
> this matter.
>
>
>

why do you bring up udev and systemd AT ALL?

They are not the problem or the reason why seperate /usr is prone to break.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 02:08, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> On 29/09/2013 01:23, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>> It *really* is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
>>>> two choices, then I am all ears.
>>>>
>>>>
>> the correct and simple solution would be to deprecate /usr and move
>> everything into / .
>>
>>
> I did consider that, but gave up on the idea as not workable. Sure, it
> would work great and did work very well for Android and MacOS, both
> controlled environments.
>
> But doing it gains you nothing really apart from a crap load of stuff
> cluttering up /, thinks like local, games and share.
>
> But hey, maybe we can go right back to the originsl and put /home where
> it started: /usr/people
>
and a cluttered / is worse than a non-existant / and a cluttered /usr?

Because we are just moving in that direction.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 01:31, schrieb pk:
> On 2013-09-29 01:23, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> the correct and simple solution would be to deprecate /usr and move
>> everything into / .
> Install Windows and be done with it, I say.
>
> Best regards
>
> Peter K
>
>
> .
>
look at history, think and retry.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Greg Woodbury]

On 09/29/2013 06:55 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

> why do you bring up udev and systemd AT ALL?
>
> They are not the problem or the reason why seperate /usr is prone to break.
>
Except that systemd *is* why a seperate /usr is broken now.
Parts of the libraries that systemd depend on we *deliberately* placed 
in /usr despite the fact that they are needed to bbring the system to an 
operational state.  For *years* things required to boot the system were 
defined to be in the root file system, and items not required until 
after mounting had been accomplished were to be placed in /usr.

BTW: There is a standard (The File System Hierarch Standard - FSS) that 
existed and described this behaviour.  It was killed off by deliberate 
vendor refusals to support or adhere to it.  In frustration, the folks 
involved simply gave up.

-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury
redwolfe@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 13:03, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
> On 09/29/2013 06:55 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> why do you bring up udev and systemd AT ALL?
>>
>> They are not the problem or the reason why seperate /usr is prone to
>> break.
>>
> Except that systemd *is* why a seperate /usr is broken now.
> Parts of the libraries that systemd depend on we *deliberately* placed
> in /usr despite the fact that they are needed to bbring the system to
> an operational state.  For *years* things required to boot the system
> were defined to be in the root file system, and items not required
> until after mounting had been accomplished were to be placed in /usr.
>
> BTW: There is a standard (The File System Hierarch Standard - FSS)
> that existed and described this behaviour.  It was killed off by
> deliberate vendor refusals to support or adhere to it.  In
> frustration, the folks involved simply gave up.
>

things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
the root cause of the problem.

The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
blame too.

Systemd is just another point in a very long list. 

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Neil.

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 11:37:50PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 21:09:38 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> > > It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction,
> > > now it has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer
> > > devote the increasing time needed to support what has now become an
> > > edge case.

> > That's precisely the sort of patronising comment I was complaining of in
> > my previous paragraph.

> In what way is it patronising?

It talks down to people.  It insinuates that the readers don't have the
wherewithal to appreciate that they have been deliberately hurt by
_somebody_ rather than something "just happening"; that the idea of an
abstraction "moving" is any sort of justification for anything.

> > It isn't "evolution".  It has been a decision of somebody to move it.
> > Who?

> It hasn't been a single decision.

Somebody, somewhere was the first person to decide to put early boot
software into /usr.  Others may have followed him, sooner or later, but
there was a single person (or perhaps a conspiracy) that did this first.
Who?  There was no public discussion of this momentous change, not that
I'm aware of.  Why?

> > > > No, this breaking of separate /usr was done by some specific
> > > > project, some specific person, even, in a supreme display of
> > > > incompetence, malice, or arrogance.  How come this project and
> > > > this person have managed to maintain such a low profile?  There
> > > > seems to have been some sort of conspiracy to do this breakage in
> > > > secret, each member of the coven pushing the plot until the
> > > > damage was irrevocable.  Who was it?

> > > So which was it, one specific person or a coven of conspirators?
> > > This is open source, secret conspiracies don't really work well. If
> > > this really was such a bad move, do you really think the likes of
> > > Greg K-H would not have stepped in? Or is he a conspirator too?

> > I know not how many people were involved.  Don't you think it
> > noteworthy that we on this group first learnt of the change when it
> > had already happened?  I have no idea whether people like GK-H would
> > have been aware of it either.

> I think that is entirely the right time to learn of it. If you want to
> know about the devs' discussions before reaching the decision, you
> should read gentoo-dev. Until then it was a dev issue, now it is being
> implemented it is a user issue.

Please be aware the change I was talking about was the decision to break
separate /usr, not the Gentoo devs' reaction to this breakage.  Why did
we only become aware of the decision to break separate /usr after it was
too late to do anything about it?  How could such a thing happen, if not
through conspiracy?

> > It [creating an initramfs] may or may not be demanding for any
> > particular administrator.  It is undoubtedly tedious and time
> > consuming.

> I disagree, but then I have actually tried doing it.

I tried, and gave up after a couple of hours.  It was a challenge, but
I've grown out of being fascinated by challenges for their own sake.
Then I installed dracut, only to find it won't work on my system.  I
haven't tried genkernel.  In the end, with regrets, I took /usr out of my
LVM area and put it into a new partition which became the root partition.  

> This whole discussion reminds me of a conversation I had with a senior
> SUSE engineer earlier this year, someone of a similar age to myself.
> His comment was along the lines of "I remember when Linux users wanted
> the latest bleeding edge, now they complain every time something
> changes".

The particular change is not progress, it's not a new feature, it's not
something useful for users.  It's pure breakage for no good reason.  If
this is what "bleeding edge" now means, no surprise that people complain
about it.

> -- 
> Neil Bothwick

> A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Mom.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 8:30 AM, Bruce Hill <daddy@happypenguincomputers.com> wrote:
> This does not mean that on November 1 your system will not be able to boot.
> Its simply means that beginning November 1, Gentoo devs are not required to
> jump through hoops to make apps work on systems with /usr separate from /.
>
> Now, what are you going to do? That's the question.

This won't necessarily be the end of the worl, if, and ONLY if any and 
all ebuild mainteainers are REQUIRED to provide very large and scary 
warnings if they change something that will cause any systems with a 
separate /usr and NO initramfs to fail to boot.

Anything else is pure sadism.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 9:15 AM, Michael Hampicke <mh@hadt.biz> wrote:
> Am 28.09.2013 13:32, schrieb Tanstaafl:
>> >On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon<alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> >>No really,*why exactly*?
>>
>> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when I first
>> set this system up many years ago.
>>
> Where did you read that? According to the 2004 handbook the default
> partition scheme was:
>
> Partition	Filesystem	Size	Description
> /dev/hda1	ext2	32M	Boot partition
> /dev/hda2	(swap)	512M	Swap partition
> /dev/hda3	ext3	Rest of the disk	Root partition
>
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20040419042803/http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1

While I'm fairly certain that it was in the LVM portion of the handbook 
(since that is what I was wanting to use), I really don't care what that 
link says.

The fact is, when I installed this system, it was my very first gentoo 
system, and I am very methodical about these kinds of things, and there 
is absolutely no way on gods green earth that I would have opted for a 
separate /usr unless the instructions said to do it, whether as 
something that was mandatory, or maybe it only said it was preferred (to 
take advantage of the features of LVM)...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 2:18 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Hampicke wrote:
>> No seperate /usr either

> Well, it was there when I followed it otherwise, I wouldn't have known
> to even do it.  I all but copy and pasted the instructions from the
> install guide.

I'm 99% certain it was in the LVM part of the handbook/guide.

Dale - I'm honestly curious, what is your reason, philisophical or 
technical, for wanting a separate /usr?

Everything I've read says there is no good reason for it today. Separate 
/home, /tmp, /var, yes, good reasons for t hose... but not /usr...

So, again - why would you prefer switching distro's over merging /usr 
back into / and be done with it?

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 3:04 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi, William.
>
> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 11:01:59AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
>> I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs which I
>> built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there.

> Until, after some update, it reminds you of its presence by not booting
> your machine.  That's the sort of excitement I can do without.

Precisely. And, it is my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), that 
simply keeping your old kernel/initramfs around is NOT a guarantee (it 
might work - and it might NOT) of being able to fallback to a known 
working config until you figure it out.

THAT, in a nutshell, is why my intention is to NEVER let one of those 
things on my systems.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 3:50 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 20:11:06 +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> To merge two filesystems, you just merge two filesystems. You don't
>> rebuild anything. You might have some downtime though
>>
>> one reboot. You cp everything into /newuser. On shutdown you unmount
>> /usr, mv newuser usr, sync, unmount, reboot.
>> if you want to do it 'old fashioned', you cp everything to /newuser,
>> reboot with systemrescuecd, mount / on /mnt/gentoo, my newuser to usr
>> and reboot. Oh, and change fstab.

> It's not that simple if /usr is on LVM,

Mine is

> / is not large enough to hold /usr

But luckily, mine is - merging will leave about 5GB free (out of a total 
of 19GB for my / filesystem)...

> and resizing the partition is really tricky. In that case, the
> simplest option is to start using an initramfs. Once that is working,
> you can get rid of the separate root partition and move that
> filesystem into the VG too.

Thanks, but I definitely don't want my / on LVM... ;)

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 10:20:49AM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-28 8:30 AM, Bruce Hill <daddy@happypenguincomputers.com> wrote:
> > This does not mean that on November 1 your system will not be able to boot.
> > Its simply means that beginning November 1, Gentoo devs are not required to
> > jump through hoops to make apps work on systems with /usr separate from /.
> >
> > Now, what are you going to do? That's the question.
> 
> This won't necessarily be the end of the worl, if, and ONLY if any and 
> all ebuild mainteainers are REQUIRED to provide very large and scary 
> warnings if they change something that will cause any systems with a 
> separate /usr and NO initramfs to fail to boot.

The news item *IS* the warning.
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim (was: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01)

[Greg Woodbury]

On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
> the root cause of the problem.
>
> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
> blame too.
>
> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>
The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of 
UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain 
things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly, the 
original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly, but 
other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root and usr.

The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never terribly 
big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home filesystem 
  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill all 
availab;e space, and users collect *things*

Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and 
diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.

By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to 
not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three filesystem 
layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be like Topsy 
(she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as "distributions" 
arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions became a real concern 
to some and standardization offorts were encouraged.

The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem Hierarch 
Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V 
definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added 
more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.

THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding all 
the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet even 
then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things started 
falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the 
Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The 
fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted and 
certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.

(Look out, there are some severely mixed metaphors coming and perhaps 
even some "allegory"  Bear with it and you should get the gist of my 
accusations.)

And now we are here.  There is no clear definition of what comprises 
this OS that is a Linux kernel and a largely GNU based user-land.  There 
are two major X-Windows based "Desktop Environments" and many less major 
DEs and Linux is seen as being "locked in a struggle" with the Microsoft 
OSs to "win the hearts and minds of the Users."

This is quite scary to many folks who depend on the success of Linux 
"winning" the so-called war.  One of the camps bent on wining the "war" 
is GNOME.  Despite much history and experience that shows that choice 
and freedom are NOT disadvantages, the mainline GNOME folks have charged 
ahead on their own in a direction that overrides user choice and seems 
bound and determined to "outdo" Microsoft at their own game.

As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army 
marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke 
off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain 
flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.

It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of the 
root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME camp.
These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat" 
Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler 
explanation.


I am NOT happy with the situation as it stands.  Efforts that I have 
made on behalf of the FOSS and Linux/GNU are no longer serving to 
benefit me and the others with whom I thought I shared aspirations.

I am an OS Agnostic/Atheist. I use what works to do what I need to do. 
My at-home network includes all four (or is that 3.5?) "consumer" OSes. 
I have spent quite a bit of effort to have them all work together, but 
forces seem to be in play that seem determined to "win at all costs" and 
enforce a computing monoculture.  Such a result is not a good thing. As 
with biological systems, monocultures are more vulnerable to 
interference and disease.  The evolution of differentiated organ systems 
in more complex (or "higher") forms of life is driven by the need to 
provide robustness and continued operation in the face of unknown 
challenges.

To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required for 
good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.


[PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and 
Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.

-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury
redwolfe@gmail.com

Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim (was: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01)

[Alon Bar-Lev]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 6:12 PM, Greg Woodbury <redwolfe@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>> the root cause of the problem.
>>
>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>> blame too.
>>
>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>
> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly, the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly, but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root and usr.
>
> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill all availab;e space, and users collect *things*
>
> Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.
>
> By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three filesystem layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be like Topsy (she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as "distributions" arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions became a real concern to some and standardization offorts were encouraged.
>
> The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem Hierarch Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.
>
> THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding all the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet even then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things started falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted and certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.
>
> (Look out, there are some severely mixed metaphors coming and perhaps even some "allegory"  Bear with it and you should get the gist of my accusations.)
>
> And now we are here.  There is no clear definition of what comprises this OS that is a Linux kernel and a largely GNU based user-land.  There are two major X-Windows based "Desktop Environments" and many less major DEs and Linux is seen as being "locked in a struggle" with the Microsoft OSs to "win the hearts and minds of the Users."
>
> This is quite scary to many folks who depend on the success of Linux "winning" the so-called war.  One of the camps bent on wining the "war" is GNOME.  Despite much history and experience that shows that choice and freedom are NOT disadvantages, the mainline GNOME folks have charged ahead on their own in a direction that overrides user choice and seems bound and determined to "outdo" Microsoft at their own game.
>
> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>
> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME camp.
> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat" Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler explanation.
>
>
> I am NOT happy with the situation as it stands.  Efforts that I have made on behalf of the FOSS and Linux/GNU are no longer serving to benefit me and the others with whom I thought I shared aspirations.
>
> I am an OS Agnostic/Atheist. I use what works to do what I need to do. My at-home network includes all four (or is that 3.5?) "consumer" OSes. I have spent quite a bit of effort to have them all work together, but forces seem to be in play that seem determined to "win at all costs" and enforce a computing monoculture.  Such a result is not a good thing. As with biological systems, monocultures are more vulnerable to interference and disease.  The evolution of differentiated organ systems in more complex (or "higher") forms of life is driven by the need to provide robustness and continued operation in the face of unknown challenges.
>
> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
>
>
> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>
> --
> G.Wolfe Woodbury
> redwolfe@gmail.com
>

Indeed, you put it in good words, I too claim that the systemd agenda
is what began all this, while it is hidden within all claims.

Regards,
Alon Bar-Lev.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-28 2:18 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Michael Hampicke wrote:
>>> No seperate /usr either
>
>> Well, it was there when I followed it otherwise, I wouldn't have known
>> to even do it.  I all but copy and pasted the instructions from the
>> install guide.
>
> I'm 99% certain it was in the LVM part of the handbook/guide.
>
> Dale - I'm honestly curious, what is your reason, philisophical or
> technical, for wanting a separate /usr?
>
> Everything I've read says there is no good reason for it today.
> Separate /home, /tmp, /var, yes, good reasons for t hose... but not
> /usr...
>
> So, again - why would you prefer switching distro's over merging /usr
> back into / and be done with it?
>
> .
>


I didn't use LVM back then.  I only started using LVM a few years ago. 

The reason is the same I have posted before.  I have / and /boot on
regular partitions.  Everything else is on LVM.  I don't have / on LVM
because it would require a init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM
because grub doesn't or didn't support it.  I have since switched to
grub2 so it may but still have the issue with / so no need redoing
everything for that. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[pk]

On 2013-09-29 12:59, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

> look at history, think and retry.

That's just what I did. Read and retry.

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-28 3:04 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>> Hi, William.
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 11:01:59AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
>>> I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs
>>> which I
>>> built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there.
>
>> Until, after some update, it reminds you of its presence by not booting
>> your machine.  That's the sort of excitement I can do without.
>
> Precisely. And, it is my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), that
> simply keeping your old kernel/initramfs around is NOT a guarantee (it
> might work - and it might NOT) of being able to fallback to a known
> working config until you figure it out.
>
> THAT, in a nutshell, is why my intention is to NEVER let one of those
> things on my systems.
>
> .
>

That is a point I have made a few times.  If the init thingy fails and I
can't get my system to boot, Gentoo isn't doing me a bit of good.  I
can't boot to get help to fix it and I'm not walking up the tall hill to
my brothers to try and get help with his computer.  With my health, that
would be only one trip, two at best.  A OS is no different than anything
else around here that is broken, if it is broke and I can't fix it, I
replace it.  I have done it with appliances and several other things
including cars.  All of whcih costs a lot more money and such than any
OS out there that I know of. 

I think I'll update that Kubuntu disk right quick while I am thinking
about it.  Fall back plan just in case.  ;-) 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2857 bytes --]

On Sep 29, 2013 3:33 AM, "Alan McKinnon" <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 29/09/2013 10:25, Mick wrote:
> > On Sunday 29 Sep 2013 06:29:37 Walter Dnes wrote:
> >> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 06:09:40PM -0500, Dale wrote
> >>
> >>> Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam around
> >>> and test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is, I already
> >>> have a starting point.
> >>
> >>   I'm already looking. http://forums.funtoo.org/viewtopic.php?id=2265
> >> and they also dislike systemd.  I think I could get to like it.  See
> >> also http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34
> >
> > Very interesting!  This looks as a logical way to put udev back in its
> > userspace box and stop it breaking the OS, or did I understand it
incorrectly?
> >
>
> Exherbo might be worth a look too[1].
>
> It's a sort-of Gentoo fork using the portage tree and PMS; plus Ciaran
> strikes me as the kind of guy who *would* expend massive effort to find
> a way round current udev and systemd.
>
>
> [1] I didn't look myself. I have no idea what Exherbo's stance is on
> this matter.

Exherbo recommends installing systemd [1]. Sabayon installs systemd by
default [2]. Funtoo is considering running GNOME >=3.8 in a container so
systemd doesn't "impact" the rest of the system [3] (which by the way looks
like an interesting idea). However, in the same link Daniel Robbins says:

"[...] from my perspective, I think it is simply so people can run GNOME. I
do like GNOME 3.6. I like their new UI. It would be nice to run 3.8. I
don't care about systemd. It is simply a dep of GNOME. That is all."

I see that as being open to the idea of using systemd in the future. It
doesn't say that they'll never support systemd, as others would. Well,
users; for the people that actually write the code, the majority seems to
like systemd, or at least don't have a problem with it.

Anyhow, many in this thread forget that it was the OpenRC maintainer the
one that proposed the change to stop supporting a separate /usr without an
initramfs. If you use OpenRC, and have a separate /usr without an
initramfs, and *anything * breaks in your machine, you get to keep the
pieces. No (official) support for you.

It doesn't matter if you use udev, eudev (which is the same, just
emasculated), nor mdev. OpenRC will start assuming an early available /usr;
that's why its maintainer championed the change. It needs it to actually
compete with systemd. So even Funtoo will need the same requirement, unless
they switch to runit.

As others have said, this is not really related to systemd/udev. It's
OpenRC, the "official" and (still) recommended init system for Gentoo, the
one that is making the change.

And about time, if you ask me.

Regards.

[1] http://www.exherbo.org/docs/install-guide.html
[2] http://www.sabayon.org
[3] http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-674

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[gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 17:12, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>> the root cause of the problem.
>>
>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>> blame too.
>>
>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>
> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of
> UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain
> things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly,
> the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly,
> but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root
> and usr.
>

in the very early days /usr did not exist in the first space and was
only created because someone added a harddisk.

Not really a good reason to keep it around.

> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never
> terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home
> filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill
> all availab;e space, and users collect *things*

and a seperate /home does not create any problems.
/var is much more prone to accidentally fill up then /usr ever was.

> Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and
> diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.
>
> By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to
> not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three
> filesystem layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be
> like Topsy (she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as
> "distributions" arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions
> became a real concern to some and standardization offorts were
> encouraged.
>
> The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem
> Hierarch Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V
> definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added
> more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.
>
> THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding
> all the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet
> even then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things
> started falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the
> Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The
> fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted
> and certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.

too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.

>
> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army
> marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke
> off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain
> flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>
> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of
> the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME
> camp.
> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat"
> Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler
> explanation.

that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.

>
>
> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required
> for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
>

what? that you need an initrd? That is so bad?

Are you kidding me?
>
> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and
> Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>
no thank you. But if I might add one: you are making an elephant out of
a gnat.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 14:07, schrieb Alan Mackenzie:

<snipped everything because of stupid 'conspiracy' talk>

there was no conspiracy and there will never be one to break seperate /usr.

In fact seperate /usr works just fine.

You just need an initrd/initramfs.

Other distros are using those for ages. So for them putting something
'essential' into /usr was no problem. It was not their fault that gentoo
users hate this things so much. From REDHATs or SuSEs perspective
seperate /usr is not a problem. Putting
lvm/bluetooth/mdraid/whateverthefuckyoumightneed there was and is not a
problem too. Thanks to initrds&co. They are using them for AGES and it
works fine.

See? No conspiracy needed. It just happened that YOUR use case of
seperate /usr + no initrd has become so arcane and rare that pretty much
nobody needs or wants to worry about fringe cases.

Would you be fine with a 40% decrease in performance just to optimally
support some 3 machines worldwide architecture? Certainly not. And that
is not a conspiracy either.

I dislike them, because they are another step to be taken on updates.
But if I was so dumb to create a seperate /usr - well I wouldn't
complain about the initrd and just go with the rest.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 17:24, schrieb pk:
> On 2013-09-29 12:59, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> look at history, think and retry.
> That's just what I did. Read and retry.
>
> Best regards
>
> Peter K
>
>
> .
>
I did, your mail did not make any more sense at all.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Dale]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 29.09.2013 17:12, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
>> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>
>>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>>> the root cause of the problem.
>>>
>>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>>> blame too.
>>>
>>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>>
>> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of
>> UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain
>> things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly,
>> the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly,
>> but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root
>> and usr.
>>
> in the very early days /usr did not exist in the first space and was
> only created because someone added a harddisk.
>
> Not really a good reason to keep it around.

Nope, new reasons now.  Good ones for me and quite a few others as well. 

>
>> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never
>> terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home
>> filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill
>> all availab;e space, and users collect *things*
> and a seperate /home does not create any problems.
> /var is much more prone to accidentally fill up then /usr ever was.

Happened to me twice since I started using LVM.  I might add, it was one
reason I started using LVM in the first place.  I needed to be able to
increase the size of file systems without redoing everything.  LVM does
that pretty well and has saved my bacon more than once. 


>
> <<<SNIP>>>
>> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army
>> marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke
>> off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain
>> flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>>
>> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of
>> the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME
>> camp.
>> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat"
>> Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler
>> explanation.
> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.

If not, then what was it?  You seem to know what it was that started it
so why not share?

>
>>
>> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required
>> for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
>>
> what? that you need an initrd? That is so bad?
>
> Are you kidding me?

For me, nope, I ain't kidding one dang bit.  For me, I have used one
before and it was a mess.  It failed more times than I would care to
think about so pardon me for NOT wanting to use one again. 

>> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and
>> Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>>
> no thank you. But if I might add one: you are making an elephant out of
> a gnat.
>
>

Maybe that gnat didn't bite you and give you some serious reason not to
let it happen again.  You worry about the elephant tho.  :-D

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 29.09.2013 17:24, schrieb pk:
>> On 2013-09-29 12:59, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>
>>> look at history, think and retry.
>> That's just what I did. Read and retry.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Peter K
>>
>>
>> .
>>
> I did, your mail did not make any more sense at all.
>
>

That could be the problem then couldn't it? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike)]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6197 bytes --]

El 29/09/13 18:03, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
> Am 29.09.2013 17:12, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
>> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>
>>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>>> the root cause of the problem.
>>>
>>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>>> blame too.
>>>
>>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>>
>> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of
>> UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain
>> things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly,
>> the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly,
>> but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root
>> and usr.
>>
> in the very early days /usr did not exist in the first space and was
> only created because someone added a harddisk.
>
> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
I'm going to show the lack of sense of this argument:
in the very early days linux did not exist in the first space and was
only created because someone got a 386.

Not really a good reason to keep it around.

in the very early days GNU did not exist in the first space and was
only created because someone jammed a printer.

Not really a good reason to keep it around.

in the very early days Gentoo did not exist in the first space and was
only created because someone added a processor.

Not really a good reason to keep it around.

in the very early days hardening did not exist in the first space and was
only created because someone added security.

Not really a good reason to keep it around.

in the very early days Gnome did not exist in the first space and was
only created because someone got a graphics card.

Not really a good reason to keep it around.

I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the pattern there.

Ohh and BTW, /usr was not just added because someone added a harddrive,
in most cases it was used to allow machines contain a very small system
on / which was enough to just boot and mount a networked system (/usr)
containing most of the software. This allowed for cheaper deployment of
machines since the hard drive could be smaller as it wouldn't need to
have all the data locally. Yeah, if this sounds familiar is because this
was later moved to initramfs.

>> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never
>> terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home
>> filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill
>> all availab;e space, and users collect *things*
> and a seperate /home does not create any problems.
> /var is much more prone to accidentally fill up then /usr ever was.
You are jst getting it wrong, /var was kept locally as the data there
was supposed to change from machine to machine.
>> Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and
>> diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.
>>
>> By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to
>> not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three
>> filesystem layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be
>> like Topsy (she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as
>> "distributions" arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions
>> became a real concern to some and standardization offorts were
>> encouraged.
>>
>> The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem
>> Hierarch Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V
>> definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added
>> more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.
>>
>> THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding
>> all the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet
>> even then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things
>> started falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the
>> Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The
>> fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted
>> and certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.
> too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.
Too bad separate /usr is much older than initramfs.
>> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army
>> marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke
>> off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain
>> flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>>
>> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of
>> the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME
>> camp.
>> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat"
>> Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler
>> explanation.
> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
True, fingers here should be pointed into another direction like systemd.
>> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required
>> for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
> what? that you need an initrd? That is so bad?
It may be, there is people which may not have enough free space ob /boot
for example.
> Are you kidding me?
I doubt it, instead you seem to be just trolling, see your own arguments
>> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and
>> Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>>
> no thank you. But if I might add one: you are making an elephant out of
> a gnat.
To me it looks like youu are making a gnat out of an elephant.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[pk]

On 2013-09-29 18:36, Dale wrote:

> That could be the problem then couldn't it? 

Indeed. :-)

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 10:57 AM, Bruce Hill <daddy@happypenguincomputers.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 10:20:49AM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-28 8:30 AM, Bruce Hill <daddy@happypenguincomputers.com> wrote:
>>> This does not mean that on November 1 your system will not be able to boot.
>>> Its simply means that beginning November 1, Gentoo devs are not required to
>>> jump through hoops to make apps work on systems with /usr separate from /.
>>>
>>> Now, what are you going to do? That's the question.
>>
>> This won't necessarily be the end of the worl, if, and ONLY if any and
>> all ebuild mainteainers are REQUIRED to provide very large and scary
>> warnings if they change something that will cause any systems with a
>> separate /usr and NO initramfs to fail to boot.
>
> The news item *IS* the warning.

Oh for fucks sake... BULLSHIT.

If an ebuild maintainer changes something that will BREAK BOOTING on 
systems that violate the 'no separate /usr without an initramfs' rule, 
what in the FUCK is the problem with requiring them to WARN PEOPLE?

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 11:24 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tanstaafl wrote:
>> Dale - I'm honestly curious, what is your reason, philisophical or
>> technical, for wanting a separate /usr?
>>
>> Everything I've read says there is no good reason for it today.
>> Separate /home, /tmp, /var, yes, good reasons for t hose... but not
>> /usr...
>>
>> So, again - why would you prefer switching distro's over merging /usr
>> back into / and be done with it?

> The reason is the same I have posted before.  I have / and /boot on
> regular partitions.  Everything else is on LVM.  I don't have / on LVM
> because it would require a init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM
> because grub doesn't or didn't support it.  I have since switched to
> grub2 so it may but still have the issue with / so no need redoing
> everything for that.

Well, I don't see a *reason* to WANT to have /usr on a separate 
partition. I see only THE reason that you have it there NOW.

Also, logically speaking, if the stated reason for not having / (or 
/boot) on separate LVM partitions is because it would require an init 
thingy, then why can't you simply add /usr to that reason?

Again, I'm asking for why you WANT it on a separate LVM partition, not 
why it is there now.

The way I see it, if y ou cannot provide a rational answer to that 
question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to 
abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> On 2013-09-29 10:57 AM, Bruce Hill <daddy@happypenguincomputers.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 10:20:49AM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2013-09-28 8:30 AM, Bruce Hill <daddy@happypenguincomputers.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> This does not mean that on November 1 your system will not be able to
>>>> boot.
>>>> Its simply means that beginning November 1, Gentoo devs are not required
>>>> to
>>>> jump through hoops to make apps work on systems with /usr separate from
>>>> /.
>>>>
>>>> Now, what are you going to do? That's the question.
>>>
>>>
>>> This won't necessarily be the end of the worl, if, and ONLY if any and
>>> all ebuild mainteainers are REQUIRED to provide very large and scary
>>> warnings if they change something that will cause any systems with a
>>> separate /usr and NO initramfs to fail to boot.
>>
>>
>> The news item *IS* the warning.
>
>
> Oh for fucks sake... BULLSHIT.
>
> If an ebuild maintainer changes something that will BREAK BOOTING on systems
> that violate the 'no separate /usr without an initramfs' rule, what in the
> FUCK is the problem with requiring them to WARN PEOPLE?

The news item allows developers to assume that /usr is available from
early boot. Therefore, they *could* be breaking *some* setups, and
they will not even realize it. That is the beauty of having /usr
available from early boot: it frees developers from thinking in all
kind of different setups and combinations (it is on LVM? it uses raid?
what level? it's on NFS? do I need a special filesystem?), so they can
work in bringing more awesomeness into Gentoo.

They cannot put a warning if they don't know something will break
*some* setups. And the whole point of this is that they don't have to
consider every single possible combination of setups; the point is not
to force you to have an initramfs.

The point is to guarantee early /usr availability.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 6:46 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> Except you can never break Gentoo with a kernel update because, unlike
> some other distros, installing a new kernel does not uninstall the
> previous one. No matter how badly wrng a kernel update goes, you can
> always hit reset then select the old one from the GRUB menu -
> reinstallation doesn't come into it.

My understanding is that this is not true, and that a USERLAND update 
(LVM2, which I use, among them) can cause breakage that will cause the 
CURRENT kernel+initramfs to no longer boot.

Is my understanding flawed?

Totally side question: Anyone ever hear Linus' opinion of an initramfs 
being required to boot a system?

[gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 11:12 AM, Greg Woodbury <redwolfe@gmail.com> wrote:
> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of the
> root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME camp.

Thanks for the excellent summary... and this explains a lot...

It also doesn't surpise me, given my extreme loathing for GNOME for a 
very long time. And that in and of itself is enough reason to avoid 
Lennart and systemd like the plague that it/they is/are.

I sure hope gentoo can find a way to avoid requiring systemd.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 8:07 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Please be aware the change I was talking about was the decision to break
> separate /usr, not the Gentoo devs' reaction to this breakage.  Why did
> we only become aware of the decision to break separate /usr after it was
> too late to do anything about it?  How could such a thing happen, if not
> through conspiracy?

Even if this quote: 'nothing in politics happens by accident'? never 
really was spoken, it should have - because truer words were never spoken.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 10:04 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/09/2013 13:32, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> This, combined with an intense (also maybe irrational) desire to avoid
>> like the plague using an initramfs, is why this decision to FORCE me
>> into a position of possibly having to break my system (either by a filed
>> attempt at merging /usr into /, or a failed attampt at using an initramfs).

> No-one is forcing you to do anything, the news item did not say that.
>
> It says that if you do it, the devs will not support you and you are on
> your own. It also says that in the dev's opinion, the day when you can
> no longer support it either is probably not too far away

>> The main thing about this that pisses me off is the lack of enough
>> warning... one month? Really? One month to completely rebuild a
>> server that has been running flawlessly for many years, just
>> because someone doesn't like something that has been done for many
>> years?

> First, it is not one month, it is much longer. We've all been
> whinging about the issue for most of this year.

Oh, please... the last conversations about this were *only* with respect 
to udev. Claiming that issue/conversation/thread adequately serves as 
advance warning about this *new* ultimatum is disingenuous at best, and 
an outright LIE at worst.

> Two, why do you think you need to rebuild the entire machine? You
> don't need to do that just to merge two filesystems.
>
> To merge two filesystems, you just merge two filesystems. You don't
> rebuild anything. You might have some downtime though

Right, I misspoke there, but something that seems trivial to one person 
may not be quite so trivial to another.

I have *never* merged a critical filesystem on a critical server like 
this before.

> Please see the news item for what it actually is, not something else.

I see it as an ultimatum that I *must* change a server that has been 
running flawlessly for years, or face breakage at some point in the NEAR 
future.

I also view this as a potential 'shot across the bow' warning that 
systemd is coming and will be shoved down our throats, like it or not.

Maybe it isn't, but judging solely by recent events, I think that is 
much more likely than not.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 6:36 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> So this brings us back to the essential technical problem that still
> needs to be solved on your machines:
>
> /usr needs to be available (and not only for BT keyboards) at the
> earliest possible opportunity - this is a technical constraint. To
> guarantee that, you need to either merge /usr with /, or use an
> initramfs to guarantee that /usr is available before anything else
> happens in userland.
>
> It*really*  is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
> two choices, then I am all ears.

Ok, and if this is all true, I can accept it.

But...

> Technically, you could include /var/lib/ and maybe even /opt in there.
> but we can safely exclude those at this time as only a brain-dead moron
> would ever put init-critical code there.

I also have /var on a separate (LVM) partition. What I'm AFRAID of, is 
that some 'brain-dead moron' will, sometime in the future, arbitrarily 
decide that having a separate /var will *also* require an initramfs 
because some *other* brain-dead moron (who happens to have enough clout 
to shove their garbage down our throats)... then what is next /home?

It seems to me like the more likely case is that someone somewhere wants 
to require BOTH systemd AND an initramfs in ALL cases, and this is just 
the first step in that progression.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 4:17 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>
>>> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
>>> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
>>> for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
>>> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
>>
>> Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
>> separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
>> <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
>> patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
>> appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
>> round here.)
>
> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
> increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.

So the solution is to give users one MONTH to prepare? Why not 6 months, 
or better, a year? What for gods sake is the rush???

Where are the links/pointers to the INTERNAL discussions of this 
decision? I seriously want to know. If gentoo devs are not willing to 
provide a 'paper trail' for how this decision was arrived at, and let 
others judge their decisions based on the merits of their arguments, 
then what does that say about their true motivations/intentions?

Again, I don't have a problem necessarily with what is being decided (no 
separate /usr without an initramfs), my problem is with the 
implementation - giving us one MONTH before we can expect possible 
breakage with each and every update.

The other HUGE thing that worries me, and has me seriously considering 
switching to FreeBSD NOW, is, maybe there really is a secret, underlying 
ulterior motive to force both systemd AND an initramfs for everyone in 
ALL use cases. If that is the case, then say so now, and give those of 
us who do not want this advanced notice, and I'll just plan on setting 
my gentoo box to never update on Nov 1, and start working on learning 
FreeBSD and if necessary, pay someone to help me migrate services to it.

But before I do that, I guess due diligence demands that I now go to the 
FreeBSD support lists/forums (whatever they use) to confirm that FreeBSD 
does NOT and never WILL require an initramfs (preferably the reason 
being architectural differences in the kernel itself). Thankfully they 
have their own init system, so no worrying about systemd invading 
there... I hope...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-28 12:01 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
> have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you will
> need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.

Which, if you even bothered to read the words in the posts of the people 
who are pushing back on this so much as to their specific *reasons* that 
this is a problem, is the whole point...

I am reasonably good at following instructions, but I am paranoid when 
it comes to researching before doing something that has even a remote 
potential for breaking one of my systems - and the horror stories I've 
read involving the whole initramfs deal just makes it clear that it is 
just one more single point of failure that has a very GOOD chance of 
breaking every time I upgrade my kernel or certain critical USERLAND 
tools (like LVM) (I do NOT use genkernel or dracut and I do NOT want to 
have to START using them), I update them manually, and I'm comfortable 
with that.

I have said more than once in these threads that I do *not* have a 
philosophical (or other) reason for wanting to keep them separate, so, 
my ONLY other choice (if I want to stick with gentoo, which I do) is to 
merge /usr back into /.

I've been told that this shouldn't be a big deal... while I am a 
(barely) passable linux sys admin - I am NOT a programmer, I do NOT know 
how to interpret vague boot errors or TRACE a process to see where or 
why it is failing (much less fix it if I could), so if something breaks 
badly, I'll be like a fish out of water...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:24:25PM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
> >
> > The news item *IS* the warning.
> 
> Oh for *Tanstaafl's* sake... *Tanstaafl*.
> 
> If an ebuild maintainer changes something that will BREAK BOOTING on 
> systems that violate the 'no separate /usr without an initramfs' rule, 
> what in the *Tanstaafl* is the problem with requiring them to WARN PEOPLE?

You show the smallness of your vocabulary by using profanity. And you show the
shallowness of your *nix knowledge by replying with such nonesense.
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> On 2013-09-28 4:17 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>
>>>> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
>>>> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
>>>> for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
>>>> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
>>>
>>>
>>> Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
>>> separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
>>> <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
>>> patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
>>> appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
>>> round here.)
>>
>>
>> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
>> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
>> increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.
>
>
> So the solution is to give users one MONTH to prepare? Why not 6 months, or
> better, a year? What for gods sake is the rush???
>
> Where are the links/pointers to the INTERNAL discussions of this decision? I
> seriously want to know. If gentoo devs are not willing to provide a 'paper
> trail' for how this decision was arrived at, and let others judge their
> decisions based on the merits of their arguments, then what does that say
> about their true motivations/intentions?

The discussion happened in [1], [2], and [3]. And in similar meetings
and mailing lists since months ago.

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2946
[2] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20130924.txt
[3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/88282

All has been made in the open; if you subscribed to gentoo-dev, or to
genoo-project, you would know about this changes since months ago.

> Again, I don't have a problem necessarily with what is being decided (no
> separate /usr without an initramfs), my problem is with the implementation -
> giving us one MONTH before we can expect possible breakage with each and
> every update.

How much time do you need? Six months? A year?

> The other HUGE thing that worries me, and has me seriously considering
> switching to FreeBSD NOW, is, maybe there really is a secret, underlying
> ulterior motive to force both systemd AND an initramfs for everyone in ALL
> use cases. If that is the case, then say so now, and give those of us who do
> not want this advanced notice, and I'll just plan on setting my gentoo box
> to never update on Nov 1, and start working on learning FreeBSD and if
> necessary, pay someone to help me migrate services to it.

Read the discussion: the change was proposed by William Hubbs, the
OpenRC maintainer. You know, the *other* init system? The change was
backed by the council and, it seems, most Gentoo developers, many of
whom doesn't use (and some don't like) systemd.

No bogeyman here, no grand conspiracy. Read the logs.

> But before I do that, I guess due diligence demands that I now go to the
> FreeBSD support lists/forums (whatever they use) to confirm that FreeBSD
> does NOT and never WILL require an initramfs (preferably the reason being
> architectural differences in the kernel itself). Thankfully they have their
> own init system, so no worrying about systemd invading there... I hope...

systemd, according to its author, will never support *BSD.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-29 11:24 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> Dale - I'm honestly curious, what is your reason, philisophical or
>>> technical, for wanting a separate /usr?
>>>
>>> Everything I've read says there is no good reason for it today.
>>> Separate /home, /tmp, /var, yes, good reasons for t hose... but not
>>> /usr...
>>>
>>> So, again - why would you prefer switching distro's over merging /usr
>>> back into / and be done with it?
>
>> The reason is the same I have posted before.  I have / and /boot on
>> regular partitions.  Everything else is on LVM.  I don't have / on LVM
>> because it would require a init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM
>> because grub doesn't or didn't support it.  I have since switched to
>> grub2 so it may but still have the issue with / so no need redoing
>> everything for that.
>
> Well, I don't see a *reason* to WANT to have /usr on a separate
> partition. I see only THE reason that you have it there NOW.
>
> Also, logically speaking, if the stated reason for not having / (or
> /boot) on separate LVM partitions is because it would require an init
> thingy, then why can't you simply add /usr to that reason?
>
> Again, I'm asking for why you WANT it on a separate LVM partition, not
> why it is there now.
>
> The way I see it, if y ou cannot provide a rational answer to that
> question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to
> abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...
>
>

Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.  For
me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.  I am the one
doing things on my puter not you or anyone else.  If the init thingy
fails, that will be me staring at a error message, not you. 

I hope that clears it up for you. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 2:02 PM, Bruce Hill <daddy@happypenguincomputers.com> wrote:
> You show the smallness of your vocabulary by using profanity.

Rotflmao!

Sometimes profanity actually serves a purpose.

> And you show the shallowness of your *nix knowledge by replying with
> such nonesense.

Nonsense? Really? You're saying it is unreasonable to expect an ebuild 
maintainer to know if something in their package requires access to 
something in /usr at boot time?

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 12:07:44 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> Hello, Neil.
> > In what way is it patronising?
> 
> It talks down to people.  It insinuates that the readers don't have the
> wherewithal to appreciate that they have been deliberately hurt by
> _somebody_ rather than something "just happening"; that the idea of an
> abstraction "moving" is any sort of justification for anything.

That only applies if you start from the position that this is a
deliberate action against users, it's not, it's just the way the Linux
ecosystem has developed. You call my attitude patronising, but from my
viewpoint your attitude is paranoid.

> Somebody, somewhere was the first person to decide to put early boot
> software into /usr.  Others may have followed him, sooner or later, but
> there was a single person (or perhaps a conspiracy) that did this first.

Not necessarily. It most likely happened that it happened the other way
round, that and increasing amount of software already in /usr became
important during early boot.

> Who?  There was no public discussion of this momentous change, not that
> I'm aware of.  Why?

It was discussed to death on this list several times, going back at
least a year.

> > I think that is entirely the right time to learn of it. If you want to
> > know about the devs' discussions before reaching the decision, you
> > should read gentoo-dev. Until then it was a dev issue, now it is being
> > implemented it is a user issue.
> 
> Please be aware the change I was talking about was the decision to break
> separate /usr, not the Gentoo devs' reaction to this breakage.  Why did
> we only become aware of the decision to break separate /usr after it was
> too late to do anything about it?  How could such a thing happen, if not
> through conspiracy?

Ignorance? Not paying attention? This comes as no surprise to those that
read this list. Users of other distros aren't even affected by it as they
have been using initramfs/initrds for many years.

> > I disagree, but then I have actually tried doing it.
> 
> I tried, and gave up after a couple of hours.  It was a challenge, but
> I've grown out of being fascinated by challenges for their own sake.
> Then I installed dracut, only to find it won't work on my system.  I
> haven't tried genkernel.  In the end, with regrets, I took /usr out of
> my LVM area and put it into a new partition which became the root
> partition.

Why didn't you try genkernel? That has been creating Gentoo initrds for
longer than I have been using Gentoo. But things would be easier if the
kernel supported LVM.

> > This whole discussion reminds me of a conversation I had with a senior
> > SUSE engineer earlier this year, someone of a similar age to myself.
> > His comment was along the lines of "I remember when Linux users wanted
> > the latest bleeding edge, now they complain every time something
> > changes".
> 
> The particular change is not progress, it's not a new feature, it's not
> something useful for users.  It's pure breakage for no good reason.  If
> this is what "bleeding edge" now means, no surprise that people complain
> about it.

The comment wasn't about early boot, I think we were talking abut Unity
at the time, but it seems relevant. Now Unity fits in with your
arguments, a single organisation developed it and sprang t upon their
users without warning. The same is not true of the usr/initramfs
situation.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 2:21 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
>> Where are the links/pointers to the INTERNAL discussions of this decision? I
>> seriously want to know. If gentoo devs are not willing to provide a 'paper
>> trail' for how this decision was arrived at, and let others judge their
>> decisions based on the merits of their arguments, then what does that say
>> about their true motivations/intentions?

> The discussion happened in [1], [2], and [3]. And in similar meetings
> and mailing lists since months ago.
>
> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2946
> [2] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20130924.txt
> [3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/88282
>
> All has been made in the open; if you subscribed to gentoo-dev, or to
> genoo-project, you would know about this changes since months ago.

Thanks very much for this...

But it would be pointless for me to subscribe to dev, since 98% of it 
would go straigvht over my head.

>> Again, I don't have a problem necessarily with what is being decided (no
>> separate /usr without an initramfs), my problem is with the implementation -
>> giving us one MONTH before we can expect possible breakage with each and
>> every update.

> How much time do you need? Six months? A year?

Either one would be MUCH better than ONE month...

> systemd, according to its author, will never support *BSD.

Thank god for small miracles...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:53:26 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:

> Precisely. And, it is my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), that 
> simply keeping your old kernel/initramfs around is NOT a guarantee (it 
> might work - and it might NOT) of being able to fallback to a known 
> working config until you figure it out.

Installing a new kernel does not magically make the old one break. If
that kernel worked yesterday, it will work today.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Your lack of organisation does not represent an
emergency in my world.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 18:09:40 -0500, Dale wrote:

> > Read the kernel docs on initramfs, you'll then understand that this is
> > not true.
> 
> Point is, they are the same to me.  Both stand between grub and the
> kernel and add yet one more point of failure.  I'm not going to nitpck
> on the difference between them since I view both in the same way. 

They are not the same. Your stating that they are the same to you is
effectively saying "I know what I believe, don't bother me with the real
facts".

> > Except you can never break Gentoo with a kernel update because, unlike
> > some other distros, installing a new kernel does not uninstall the
> > previous one. No matter how badly wrng a kernel update goes, you can
> > always hit reset then select the old one from the GRUB menu -
> > reinstallation doesn't come into it.
> 
> Provided that the old one works tho right?  What if I update and it
> breaks more than one thing?   Then what? 

That's got nothing to do with the kernel, initramfs or separate /usr.
Once init is running, all that is history, it's done its job. If
something subsequently fails, it has nothing to do with mounting /
and /usr (which is all the initramfs does).


> > This isn't even as close as comparing apples and oranges.

> To ME, a init thingy is a init thingy.  That's why I call them all init
> thingys.  To ME, both are apples.  One may be green and another red but
> both are still apples. 

Please, don't ever offer to feed me :-)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Computer apathy error: don't bother striking any key.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 2:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tanstaafl wrote:
>> The way I see it, if you cannot provide a rational answer to that
>> question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to
>> abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...

> Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
> resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.

Ok, but... everything I've read and personal experience over the years 
shows that space required for /usr should not change much, especially 
constantly grow over time (like requirements for /home can and will)- it 
may fluctuate (increase, decrease) *a little* over time, but it 
definitely should not grow substantially, so, if you had to resize it, 
most likely it is because you simply didn't allocate enough room to 
start with.

> For me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.

Sorry, but rationality is not subjective. Just because something seems 
to be rational to you doesn't mean that it is.

You have still not stated a logical, rational reason for wanting a 
separate /usr.

> I am the one doing things on my puter not you or anyone else. If the
> init thingy fails, that will be me staring at a error message, not
> you.

I don't want one of those things either, but that isn't what I was 
questioning you about.

Of course you can do whatever you want *and* are technically capable of 
on your own computer, but that doesn't automatically make those things 
logical or rational.

I did see one good case for a separate /usr (someone who was using 
ancient PATA drives, and something about striping for performance), but 
that was obviously a corner case...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:25:56PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> Tanstaafl wrote:
> >
> > The way I see it, if y ou cannot provide a rational answer to that
> > question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to
> > abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...
> >
> >
> 
> Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
> resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.  For
> me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.  I am the one
> doing things on my puter not you or anyone else.  If the init thingy
> fails, that will be me staring at a error message, not you. 
> 
> I hope that clears it up for you. 
> 
> Dale

Most eloquently sir!
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 07:03:30 -0400, Greg Woodbury wrote:

> Except that systemd *is* why a seperate /usr is broken now.

If that were true, the news item that started this thread would never
have been published. Gentoo uses openrc by default, so supporting
separate /usr on non-systemd systems (the majority) would be no problem.

If your assertion were true, all that would be needed would be an ewarn
about separate /usr hen installing systemd.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

IBM - Incredibly Bastardized Multitasking...

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 13:43:10 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:

> > Except you can never break Gentoo with a kernel update because, unlike
> > some other distros, installing a new kernel does not uninstall the
> > previous one. No matter how badly wrng a kernel update goes, you can
> > always hit reset then select the old one from the GRUB menu -
> > reinstallation doesn't come into it.  
> 
> My understanding is that this is not true, and that a USERLAND update 
> (LVM2, which I use, among them) can cause breakage that will cause the 
> CURRENT kernel+initramfs to no longer boot.
> 
> Is my understanding flawed?

I would say so. Unless you change the LVM metadata in such a way that the
tools in the initramfs cannt read it, I don't see how this can happen.
And you'd have to recreates your LVs for that to occur.

> Totally side question: Anyone ever hear Linus' opinion of an initramfs 
> being required to boot a system?

I suppose the fact that his kernel includes an initramfs and always tries
to load it when booting, and that there isn't even an option to disable
this behaviour, gives a good indication of his feelings towards the idea
of an initramfs.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Q. What is the difference between Queensland and yoghurt?
A. Yoghurt has an active culture.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[William Hubbs]

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On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:55:49PM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-28 6:36 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> > So this brings us back to the essential technical problem that still
> > needs to be solved on your machines:
> >
> > /usr needs to be available (and not only for BT keyboards) at the
> > earliest possible opportunity - this is a technical constraint. To
> > guarantee that, you need to either merge /usr with /, or use an
> > initramfs to guarantee that /usr is available before anything else
> > happens in userland.
> >
> > It*really*  is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
> > two choices, then I am all ears.
> 
> Ok, and if this is all true, I can accept it.

Alan, this is a very good summary of the issues involved. Everyone on
the list should go and read flameeyes' blog post then this summary.

Tanstaaf,

I am the OpenRC author/maintainer and a member of base-system. I can
tell you that we are not discussing forcing systemd on everyone in
Gentoo Linux as a default init system. I can also tell you that I am not
aware of the Gentoo systemd team discussing this. Even if they were, a
distro-wide change like this would have to be brought before the
Council.

William


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 2:55 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I am the OpenRC author/maintainer and a member of base-system. I can
> tell you that we are not discussing forcing systemd on everyone in
> Gentoo Linux as a default init system. I can also tell you that I am not
> aware of the Gentoo systemd team discussing this. Even if they were, a
> distro-wide change like this would have to be brought before the
> Council.

Ok, good enough for me until other evidence comes along to cast doubt as 
to the truthfulness or sincerity of your statement.

Thanks William...

Now to try to get up enough nerve to attempt to merge my /usr (currently 
on LVM partition) into my / (does have enough room, and will leave me 
with a 19GB / partition with about 5GB free).

Anyone see a problem with that (only 5GB free on my / after the /usr merge)?

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[William Hubbs]

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On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:21:30PM -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> > On 2013-09-28 4:17 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> >>
> >>>> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> >>>> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
> >>>> for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> >>>> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
> >>> separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
> >>> <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
> >>> patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
> >>> appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
> >>> round here.)
> >>
> >>
> >> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
> >> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
> >> increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.
> >
> >
> > So the solution is to give users one MONTH to prepare? Why not 6 months, or
> > better, a year? What for gods sake is the rush???
> >
> > Where are the links/pointers to the INTERNAL discussions of this decision? I
> > seriously want to know. If gentoo devs are not willing to provide a 'paper
> > trail' for how this decision was arrived at, and let others judge their
> > decisions based on the merits of their arguments, then what does that say
> > about their true motivations/intentions?
> 
> The discussion happened in [1], [2], and [3]. And in similar meetings
> and mailing lists since months ago.
> 
> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2946
> [2] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20130924.txt
> [3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/88282

You forgot [4].

[4] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/dev/235575

I was actually  against it initially. After reading and understanding
where the linux ecosystem is going, my position evolved to support it.

William

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 12:55, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 29.09.2013 10:28, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
>> On 29/09/2013 10:25, Mick wrote:
>>> On Sunday 29 Sep 2013 06:29:37 Walter Dnes wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 06:09:40PM -0500, Dale wrote
>>>>
>>>>> Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam around
>>>>> and test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is, I already
>>>>> have a starting point.
>>>>   I'm already looking. http://forums.funtoo.org/viewtopic.php?id=2265
>>>> and they also dislike systemd.  I think I could get to like it.  See
>>>> also http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34
>>> Very interesting!  This looks as a logical way to put udev back in its 
>>> userspace box and stop it breaking the OS, or did I understand it incorrectly?
>>>
>> Exherbo might be worth a look too[1].
>>
>> It's a sort-of Gentoo fork using the portage tree and PMS; plus Ciaran
>> strikes me as the kind of guy who *would* expend massive effort to find
>> a way round current udev and systemd.
>>
>>
>> [1] I didn't look myself. I have no idea what Exherbo's stance is on
>> this matter.
>>
>>
>>
> 
> why do you bring up udev and systemd AT ALL?
> 
> They are not the problem or the reason why seperate /usr is prone to break.


I fell victim to the sheer amount of fud around systemd and udev and
typed without thinking enough.

s/current udev and systemd/the root cause/g


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 13:58, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 29.09.2013 13:03, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
>> On 09/29/2013 06:55 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>
>>> why do you bring up udev and systemd AT ALL?
>>>
>>> They are not the problem or the reason why seperate /usr is prone to
>>> break.
>>>
>> Except that systemd *is* why a seperate /usr is broken now.
>> Parts of the libraries that systemd depend on we *deliberately* placed
>> in /usr despite the fact that they are needed to bbring the system to
>> an operational state.  For *years* things required to boot the system
>> were defined to be in the root file system, and items not required
>> until after mounting had been accomplished were to be placed in /usr.
>>
>> BTW: There is a standard (The File System Hierarch Standard - FSS)
>> that existed and described this behaviour.  It was killed off by
>> deliberate vendor refusals to support or adhere to it.  In
>> frustration, the folks involved simply gave up.
>>
> 
> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
> the root cause of the problem.
> 
> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
> blame too.
> 
> Systemd is just another point in a very long list. 

Volker, we agree.

The problem as I see it is that we have an artificial, arbitrary
separation between "boot time" stuff and "something that happens later"
stuff. There is no clear definition of what these things are and the
only real technical criteria advanced thus far is quoted above: "after
mounting had been accomplished"

That worked in the 80s when SysV came out. But times move on, new
methods and hardware were developed and computing is now a very
different beast to what it was 30 years ago. Nowadays we have a boatload
of actions that can/may be needed to happen before fstab can be read to
mount the rest of the system.

/usr has become, whether we like it or not, an indespensable part of the
userland start up process, and the only way out of this is to have some
guarantees in place. We already have a perfectly good one - the root
file system is guaranteed to be mounted by the kernel before init is
called. If that filesystem does not contain /usr then a rather
sophisticated hack is available to ensure that /usr is available, and it
is an initramfs.

I do beleive the choice really is that clear - provide that guarantee or
be stuck forever with old code, hardware and methods. Just because SysV
worked well for ages does not mean it's rules must persist through time.
Everything changes in this worls, and our game changes faster than most
other things. Let's not cling to sacred cows when the world has
observably moved on.

None of this means I think systemd is good (or bad). Maybe it's
over-engineered, but at least someone has the balls to stand up and try
deal with the actual problem.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 2:11 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:21:30PM -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
>> > On 2013-09-28 4:17 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
>> >>>> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
>> >>>> for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
>> >>>> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
>> >>> separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
>> >>> <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
>> >>> patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
>> >>> appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
>> >>> round here.)
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
>> >> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
>> >> increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.
>> >
>> >
>> > So the solution is to give users one MONTH to prepare? Why not 6 months, or
>> > better, a year? What for gods sake is the rush???
>> >
>> > Where are the links/pointers to the INTERNAL discussions of this decision? I
>> > seriously want to know. If gentoo devs are not willing to provide a 'paper
>> > trail' for how this decision was arrived at, and let others judge their
>> > decisions based on the merits of their arguments, then what does that say
>> > about their true motivations/intentions?
>>
>> The discussion happened in [1], [2], and [3]. And in similar meetings
>> and mailing lists since months ago.
>>
>> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2946
>> [2] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20130924.txt
>> [3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/88282
>
> You forgot [4].
>
> [4] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/dev/235575
>
> I was actually  against it initially. After reading and understanding
> where the linux ecosystem is going, my position evolved to support it.

Thanks for the link, William, and for all the work you have done to
bring Gentoo to modern standards.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alon Bar-Lev]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 10:34 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 2:11 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:21:30PM -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> >> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> >> > On 2013-09-28 4:17 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>>> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> >> >>>> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
> >> >>>> for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> >> >>>> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
> >> >>> separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
> >> >>> <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
> >> >>> patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
> >> >>> appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
> >> >>> round here.)
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
> >> >> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
> >> >> increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > So the solution is to give users one MONTH to prepare? Why not 6 months, or
> >> > better, a year? What for gods sake is the rush???
> >> >
> >> > Where are the links/pointers to the INTERNAL discussions of this decision? I
> >> > seriously want to know. If gentoo devs are not willing to provide a 'paper
> >> > trail' for how this decision was arrived at, and let others judge their
> >> > decisions based on the merits of their arguments, then what does that say
> >> > about their true motivations/intentions?
> >>
> >> The discussion happened in [1], [2], and [3]. And in similar meetings
> >> and mailing lists since months ago.
> >>
> >> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2946
> >> [2] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20130924.txt
> >> [3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/88282
> >
> > You forgot [4].
> >
> > [4] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/dev/235575
> >
> > I was actually  against it initially. After reading and understanding
> > where the linux ecosystem is going, my position evolved to support it.
>
> Thanks for the link, William, and for all the work you have done to
> bring Gentoo to modern standards.

modern = what enforced by udev (aka systemd)?

>
> Regards.
> --
> Canek Peláez Valdés
> Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
> Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 18:33, Dale wrote:
>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>> > And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>> > not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
> If not, then what was it?  You seem to know what it was that started it
> so why not share?
> 

He already said it. Someone added a hard disk to a PDP-9 (or was it an 11?)

Literally. It all traces back to that. In those days there was no such
thing as volume management or raid. If you added a (seriously expensive)
disk the only feasible way to get it's storage in the system was to
mount it as a separate volume.

From that one single action this entire mess of separate /usr arose as
folks discovered more and more reasons to consider it good and keep it
around

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 19:43, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-28 6:46 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>> Except you can never break Gentoo with a kernel update because, unlike
>> some other distros, installing a new kernel does not uninstall the
>> previous one. No matter how badly wrng a kernel update goes, you can
>> always hit reset then select the old one from the GRUB menu -
>> reinstallation doesn't come into it.
> 
> My understanding is that this is not true, and that a USERLAND update
> (LVM2, which I use, among them) can cause breakage that will cause the
> CURRENT kernel+initramfs to no longer boot.
> 
> Is my understanding flawed?

No, this can happen in theory. It's quite simple to describe in somewhat
abstract terms:

Imagine for example that LVM makes a backwards-incompatible change to
it's metadata. You are warned about this and take care to update your
kernel so that it can deal with the new metadata by including support
for both formats.

And you forget to update the initramfs. Reboot. Oops.

This is merely highly inconvenient, not the end of the world. Download a
very recent rescue disk on another computer and boot with that to effect
the repair. Then leave work and make your local publican's day whilst
you vent your fury yet again

Point is, this is not a situation unique to kernels, userlands and
initramfs. That kind of error can occur in so many different ways (eg
deploy a seriously broken linker and loader, or simply uninstall bash on
a RHEL4 host), it's just that when it happens in the circumstances you
ask about, it's one of the most inconvenient errors in a huge list.

This is why we sysadmins have jobs - we are supposed to have subtantial
clue and be able to predict and avoid such goofs.

> Totally side question: Anyone ever hear Linus' opinion of an initramfs
> being required to boot a system?

Never read it myself, but I'll hazard a guess:

He detests it with a passion calling it a grotesque hack, but tolerates
it because binary distros need it and no-one has come up with something
better (i.e. it sucks less)?


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 19:59, Tanstaafl wrote:
> I've been told that this shouldn't be a big deal... while I am a
> (barely) passable linux sys admin

Allow me to forward an opinion. The above is not true, not even close.

Don't knock yourself, you don't deserve it :-)

In my day job I get to meet many people, and vast fleets of them are
paid obscene amounts of money to do sysadmin work. I have an unprintable
opinion of most of these folks (I'm tired of cleaning up after them and
they mess they leave).

You on the other hand would wipe the floor with easily 95% of those
clowns. Seriously.

And that goes for just about everyone else on this list who has been
around a while.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 17:41, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> On Sep 29, 2013 3:33 AM, "Alan McKinnon" <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
> <mailto:alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>> wrote:
[snip]

>> Exherbo might be worth a look too[1].
>>
>> It's a sort-of Gentoo fork using the portage tree and PMS; plus Ciaran
>> strikes me as the kind of guy who *would* expend massive effort to find
>> a way round current udev and systemd.
>>
>>
>> [1] I didn't look myself. I have no idea what Exherbo's stance is on
>> this matter.
> 
> Exherbo recommends installing systemd [1]. Sabayon installs systemd by
> default [2]. Funtoo is considering running GNOME >=3.8 in a container so
> systemd doesn't "impact" the rest of the system [3] (which by the way
> looks like an interesting idea). However, in the same link Daniel
> Robbins says:
> 
> "[...] from my perspective, I think it is simply so people can run
> GNOME. I do like GNOME 3.6. I like their new UI. It would be nice to run
> 3.8. I don't care about systemd. It is simply a dep of GNOME. That is all."
> 
> I see that as being open to the idea of using systemd in the future. It
> doesn't say that they'll never support systemd, as others would. Well,
> users; for the people that actually write the code, the majority seems
> to like systemd, or at least don't have a problem with it.
> 
> Anyhow, many in this thread forget that it was the OpenRC maintainer the
> one that proposed the change to stop supporting a separate /usr without
> an initramfs. If you use OpenRC, and have a separate /usr without an
> initramfs, and *anything * breaks in your machine, you get to keep the
> pieces. No (official) support for you.
> 
> It doesn't matter if you use udev, eudev (which is the same, just
> emasculated), nor mdev. OpenRC will start assuming an early available
> /usr; that's why its maintainer championed the change. It needs it to
> actually compete with systemd. So even Funtoo will need the same
> requirement, unless they switch to runit.
> 
> As others have said, this is not really related to systemd/udev. It's
> OpenRC, the "official" and (still) recommended init system for Gentoo,
> the one that is making the change.

Thanks for that info. I don't keep current with the Gentoo-derived
distros as gentoo itself works great for me.

> And about time, if you ask me.

Agreed. I myself fought this change in my head for ages. And changed my
mind for the same reasons so many other people have done so too.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 1:31 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used Mandrake.
> It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one reason I left
> Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either but one reason I
> chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of that.  Now, whether
> it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init thingy just because someone
> doesn't want to put files where they should be which is not inside /usr.
>
> So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and it
> fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.  I done went
> down the road of trying to fix one of those stupid things and I have no plan
> or desire to do so again.  I'm also not going to spend hours reinstalling
> Gentoo either.  If, more than likely when, the init thingy fails, I'll be
> installing something else and I'll most my last sign off message here.  One
> thing about Linux, there are plenty of distros to pick from .  I love Gentoo
> but I like to be able to boot up without dealing with a init thingy that I
> have to fix when it goes belly up.
>
> Dale
>

I don't know why people keep humoring this kind of explanation for
systemd, udev, or /usr FUD, but this is not a rational way to think. It's
the same kind of excuse to say "I'm never going to use any kind of Linux,
even Android, because I tried it 3 or 4 times when it was on floppies,
and I couldn't get it to work".

I'm really sorry about your terrible experience with "init thingies" in the
past, but you've got to face the facts:
1) most distros today, Kubuntu included, bundle an "init thingy"
and it works flawlessly for them.
2) you really, seriously, have to own up to the fact that your init thingy
failing was very likely your fault (because of 1)
3) managing "init thingies" has gotten ridiculously easy over time as
compared to when you manually had to build them

Especially that number 2 part. I mean, let's not forget that character
of Gentoo as a distribution. Or heck, even *nix distributions in general.
*nix distributions give you a lot of tools to arrange your systems the
way you want, i.e. choice, but it is always implicitly under the assumption
that the choice you're making is an *informed* choice.

That's why you're asked to read the manual, or check the readmes,
or check the sample configs, and in this day and age, do a basic search
for working examples, before asking questions. *nix is not, and has
never been about being "polite" to users who don't know what they
are doing, and has always been about being efficient to users who do.

I've been recommended to put it "over the top" bluntly before, so:
1) STOP. FREAKING. BEING. IRRATIONAL.
2) STOP BLAMING INIT THINGIES FOR YOUR MISTAKES. THE DAMNED
THINGS WORK.
3) If you're scared of doing an init thingy *manually*, just read and do
the howto of the simplest init thingy manager in town (dracut? genkernel?).
It surely takes less time and effort than migrating to Kubuntu or whatever.
-- 
This email is:    [ ] actionable   [x] fyi        [x] social
Response needed:  [ ] yes          [x] up to you  [ ] no
Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [ ] soon       [x] none

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 19:55, Tanstaafl wrote:

[snip]

> I have *never* merged a critical filesystem on a critical server like
> this before.
> 
>> Please see the news item for what it actually is, not something else.
> 
> I see it as an ultimatum that I *must* change a server that has been
> running flawlessly for years, or face breakage at some point in the NEAR
> future.
> 
> I also view this as a potential 'shot across the bow' warning that
> systemd is coming and will be shoved down our throats, like it or not.
> 
> Maybe it isn't, but judging solely by recent events, I think that is
> much more likely than not.


William himself clarified in this thread why he pushed for this change
to happen, and it has nothing to do with systemd.

As for what it takes to get your system in line with what the news item
says, it usually is as simple as moving some files around and editing
fstab. Of course, you still need to do your planning and research,
especially listing out how much space you have where an is it enough.
But that is just routine sysadmin investigation stuff as is always done
before embarking on any change or update.

An analogy might be the manufacturer telling you your car is subject to
a recall to replace a brake item under warranty, and your insurance
telling you to do it sometime this month or face having your insurance
voided. Yeah, it's inconvenient but once done is actually not such a big
deal. mechanics work on brakes all the time all over the world and very
very few people have accidents as a result.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 4:09 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29/09/2013 19:59, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> I've been told that this shouldn't be a big deal... while I am a
>> (barely) passable linux sys admin
>
> Allow me to forward an opinion. The above is not true, not even close.
>
> Don't knock yourself, you don't deserve it :-)

Lol!!! At first I thought you were saying that it wasn't true that 
merging /usr into / shouldn't be a big deal - and I was about to start 
gnashing my teeth (again).

Thanks Alan, your words are very kind... and I'll just leave it at 
that... ;)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 20:55, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:55:49PM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-28 6:36 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> So this brings us back to the essential technical problem that still
>>> needs to be solved on your machines:
>>>
>>> /usr needs to be available (and not only for BT keyboards) at the
>>> earliest possible opportunity - this is a technical constraint. To
>>> guarantee that, you need to either merge /usr with /, or use an
>>> initramfs to guarantee that /usr is available before anything else
>>> happens in userland.
>>>
>>> It*really*  is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
>>> two choices, then I am all ears.
>>
>> Ok, and if this is all true, I can accept it.
> 
> Alan, this is a very good summary of the issues involved. Everyone on
> the list should go and read flameeyes' blog post then this summary.

Thanks William.

It really was an off-the cuff description done to answer a user's
question. I'm glad to hear it communicated what I intended.



> 
> Tanstaaf,
> 
> I am the OpenRC author/maintainer and a member of base-system. I can
> tell you that we are not discussing forcing systemd on everyone in
> Gentoo Linux as a default init system. I can also tell you that I am not
> aware of the Gentoo systemd team discussing this. Even if they were, a
> distro-wide change like this would have to be brought before the
> Council.
> 
> William
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

Weird - I thought I replied to this a while ago (I know I started one), 
but it disappeared, and is not in my Sent folder and it never made it to 
the list...

On 2013-09-29 2:55 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I am the OpenRC author/maintainer and a member of base-system. I can
> tell you that we are not discussing forcing systemd on everyone in
> Gentoo Linux as a default init system. I can also tell you that I am not
> aware of the Gentoo systemd team discussing this. Even if they were, a
> distro-wide change like this would have to be brought before the
> Council.

Thanks very much for this William. I will take you at your word and will 
stop worrying about the whole systemd thing (unless/until evidence 
warrants revisiting it)...

So, now I just have to get up the nerve to attempt the merging of my LVM 
based /usr into my / so I don't have to worry about an initramfs.

There are no technical reasons it shouldn't work - my / is 19G, with 
18GB free right now. My /usr currently takes up 13GB, so merging should 
leave mw with 5GB free...

Does anyone see an issue with a 19GB / with merged /usr and only 5GB 
free? Was I correct in my statement to Dale that there is nothing used 
by or stored in /usr that could consume that last 5GB and crash my 
server (ie, like a runaway log can fill up /var)?

Thanks again...

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 22:51, Tanstaafl wrote:
> Weird - I thought I replied to this a while ago (I know I started one),
> but it disappeared, and is not in my Sent folder and it never made it to
> the list...
> 
> On 2013-09-29 2:55 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> I am the OpenRC author/maintainer and a member of base-system. I can
>> tell you that we are not discussing forcing systemd on everyone in
>> Gentoo Linux as a default init system. I can also tell you that I am not
>> aware of the Gentoo systemd team discussing this. Even if they were, a
>> distro-wide change like this would have to be brought before the
>> Council.
> 
> Thanks very much for this William. I will take you at your word and will
> stop worrying about the whole systemd thing (unless/until evidence
> warrants revisiting it)...
> 
> So, now I just have to get up the nerve to attempt the merging of my LVM
> based /usr into my / so I don't have to worry about an initramfs.
> 
> There are no technical reasons it shouldn't work - my / is 19G, with
> 18GB free right now. My /usr currently takes up 13GB, so merging should
> leave mw with 5GB free...
> 
> Does anyone see an issue with a 19GB / with merged /usr and only 5GB
> free? Was I correct in my statement to Dale that there is nothing used
> by or stored in /usr that could consume that last 5GB and crash my
> server (ie, like a runaway log can fill up /var)?
> 
> Thanks again...
> 

Correct on all counts. This laptop runs KDE, here's my breakdown:

# du -sh /usr
13G     /usr

# du -sh /usr/*
12K     /usr/INSTALL
104K    /usr/Licenses_for_Third-Party_Components.txt
426M    /usr/bin
12M     /usr/gnu-classpath-0.98
460M    /usr/include
0       /usr/lib
525M    /usr/lib32
2.8G    /usr/lib64
134M    /usr/libexec
512K    /usr/local
38M     /usr/sbin
3.6G    /usr/share
4.9G    /usr/src
0       /usr/tmp
11M     /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

Those numbers are not likely to change much with time, with one exception:

/usr/src

That can get real big real quick if you don't clean up kernel sources
often. Ideally, you'd make that a suitably sized LV and mount it seperately.

The other space consumer is /usr/share with it's many documentation
files. But those too tend to be stable once you have everything
installed. 5G free out of 19G is ~75% space in use which is perfectly
acceptable for this case.

Regular monitoring of the state of your machines will tell you if space
usage increases so you can investigate and deal with it timeously.

I assume you long since moved portage and it's storage directories out
of /usr into /var?



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 02:45:05PM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote
> On 2013-09-29 2:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Tanstaafl wrote:
> >> The way I see it, if you cannot provide a rational answer to that
> >> question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to
> >> abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...
> 
> > Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
> > resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.
> 
> Ok, but... everything I've read and personal experience over the years 
> shows that space required for /usr should not change much, especially 
> constantly grow over time (like requirements for /home can and will)- it 
> may fluctuate (increase, decrease) *a little* over time, but it 
> definitely should not grow substantially, so, if you had to resize it, 
> most likely it is because you simply didn't allocate enough room to 
> start with.
> 
> > For me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.
> 
> Sorry, but rationality is not subjective. Just because something seems 
> to be rational to you doesn't mean that it is.
> 
> You have still not stated a logical, rational reason for wanting a 
> separate /usr.

  Here's my version of "LVM without the overhead of LVM" to allow
maximum flexibity, without the overhead of LVM.

* /dev/sda is the entire 1 terabyte drive (extended partition)

* /dev/sda5 is 200 *MEGA*bytes (YES! 200 * 10^6). It's the rootfs and
  physically contains / and /boot, etc, etc.  It also has empty directories
  /home, /opt, /var, /usr, and /tmp

* /dev/sda6 is swap, a few gigabytes

* /dev/sda7 is the rest of the hard drive.  It is mounted as /home.  It
  contains directories bindmounts/opt bindmounts/var bindmounts/usr and
  bindmounts/tmp

* Note the following excerpt from /etc/fstab

/dev/sda5               /         ext2  noatime,nodiratime,async 0 1
/dev/sda7               /home     ext4  noatime,nodiratime,async 0 1
/home/bindmounts/opt    /opt      auto  bind 0 0
/home/bindmounts/var    /var      auto  bind 0 0
/home/bindmounts/usr    /usr      auto  bind 0 0
/home/bindmounts/tmp    /tmp      auto  bind 0 0
/dev/sda6               none      swap  sw

  The rootfs is currently 22% used, so no worries there.  I originally
adopted this setup years ago when I was bouncing around between distros.
It allowed me to change to an entirely different distro without blowing
away my user directory.  Even today, it gives me maximum flexibility
without the overhead of LVM.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 616 bytes --]

On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 17:23:20 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

>   Here's my version of "LVM without the overhead of LVM" to allow
> maximum flexibity, without the overhead of LVM.

This gives you one of the advantages of LVM, the ability to use space on
a single drive as your needs change. It doesn't allow you t use multiple
drives, use different filesystems or filesystem options for different
mount points, prevent one filesystem from stealing space from another
(although you can do this with quotas) or use snapshots.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The three Rs of Microsoft support: Retry, Reboot, Reinstall.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 23:32, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 17:23:20 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> 
>>   Here's my version of "LVM without the overhead of LVM" to allow
>> maximum flexibity, without the overhead of LVM.
> 
> This gives you one of the advantages of LVM, the ability to use space on
> a single drive as your needs change. It doesn't allow you t use multiple
> drives, use different filesystems or filesystem options for different
> mount points, prevent one filesystem from stealing space from another
> (although you can do this with quotas) or use snapshots.
> 
> 


<thread_derail>

And it also prevents him from using The One True Filesystem That Will
Rule Them All and In the Darkness Bind Them:

ZFS

</thread_derail>

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-29 2:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> The way I see it, if you cannot provide a rational answer to that
>>> question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to
>>> abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...
>
>> Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
>> resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.
>
> Ok, but... everything I've read and personal experience over the years
> shows that space required for /usr should not change much, especially
> constantly grow over time (like requirements for /home can and will)-
> it may fluctuate (increase, decrease) *a little* over time, but it
> definitely should not grow substantially, so, if you had to resize it,
> most likely it is because you simply didn't allocate enough room to
> start with.

So my experience doesn't matter any then?  My /usr does vary and
sometimes varies quite a bit.  That is why I had to resize the thing. 
Saying that I didn't make it large enough to begin with isn't the
point.  When people use LVM, the reason they use it is so that we can
resize things when needed. 

>
>> For me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.
>
> Sorry, but rationality is not subjective. Just because something seems
> to be rational to you doesn't mean that it is.
>
> You have still not stated a logical, rational reason for wanting a
> separate /usr.

And what is ratinal for you, is not rational to me.  Since you can
dismiss mine, I can dismiss yours too.  Funny how that works huh?  For
ME, it is logical/rational for me to have the setup like I have it.  I
did it this way to speciffically avoid the init thingy and be flexible
when needed.  If I wanted one, I would have used one when I first
installed Gentoo and not only that, put everything but /boot on LVM. 

>
>> I am the one doing things on my puter not you or anyone else. If the
>> init thingy fails, that will be me staring at a error message, not
>> you.
>
> I don't want one of those things either, but that isn't what I was
> questioning you about.
>
> Of course you can do whatever you want *and* are technically capable
> of on your own computer, but that doesn't automatically make those
> things logical or rational.
>
> I did see one good case for a separate /usr (someone who was using
> ancient PATA drives, and something about striping for performance),
> but that was obviously a corner case...
>
>

You may not since you are not sitting in MY chair.  My statements are
not trying to change the way you run your puter, but yours seem to be
trying to get me to change mine.  I don't want to change mine when it
comes to adding a init thingy to the boot process.  Simple as that. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 29/09/2013 18:33, Dale wrote:
>>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>>>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>>>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
>> If not, then what was it?  You seem to know what it was that started it
>> so why not share?
>>
> He already said it. Someone added a hard disk to a PDP-9 (or was it an 11?)
>
> Literally. It all traces back to that. In those days there was no such
> thing as volume management or raid. If you added a (seriously expensive)
> disk the only feasible way to get it's storage in the system was to
> mount it as a separate volume.
>
> >From that one single action this entire mess of separate /usr arose as
> folks discovered more and more reasons to consider it good and keep it
> around
>

That wasn't the question tho.  My question wasn't about many years ago
but who made the change that broke support for a seperate /usr with no
init thingy.  The change that happened in the past few years.

I think I got my answer already tho.  Seems William Hubbs answered it
but I plan to read his message again.  Different thread tho.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 18:09:40 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>>> Read the kernel docs on initramfs, you'll then understand that this is
>>> not true.
>> Point is, they are the same to me.  Both stand between grub and the
>> kernel and add yet one more point of failure.  I'm not going to nitpck
>> on the difference between them since I view both in the same way. 
> They are not the same. Your stating that they are the same to you is
> effectively saying "I know what I believe, don't bother me with the real
> facts".

They are the same to me as yet one more point of failure that I DO NOT
want.  I have dealt with those in the past and I don't want either of
them and I don't care of it is called "cute teddy bears" or whatever. 
My point still stands, it is one more thing between grub and the kernel
and I don't want it. 


>>> Except you can never break Gentoo with a kernel update because, unlike
>>> some other distros, installing a new kernel does not uninstall the
>>> previous one. No matter how badly wrng a kernel update goes, you can
>>> always hit reset then select the old one from the GRUB menu -
>>> reinstallation doesn't come into it.
>> Provided that the old one works tho right?  What if I update and it
>> breaks more than one thing?   Then what? 
> That's got nothing to do with the kernel, initramfs or separate /usr.
> Once init is running, all that is history, it's done its job. If
> something subsequently fails, it has nothing to do with mounting /
> and /usr (which is all the initramfs does).
>

If I select what to boot in grub and it fails, there I sit.  If I try
another and it fails, there I sit.  I have enough issues at times
already.  I don't want one more that already has a bad, VERY bad,
history with me.  I have enough fun with the kernel at times. 

>>> This isn't even as close as comparing apples and oranges.
>> To ME, a init thingy is a init thingy.  That's why I call them all init
>> thingys.  To ME, both are apples.  One may be green and another red but
>> both are still apples. 
> Please, don't ever offer to feed me :-)
>
>

You would be surprised, I am one heck of a cook. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Mark David Dumlao wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 1:31 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used Mandrake.
>> It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one reason I left
>> Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either but one reason I
>> chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of that.  Now, whether
>> it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init thingy just because someone
>> doesn't want to put files where they should be which is not inside /usr.
>>
>> So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and it
>> fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.  I done went
>> down the road of trying to fix one of those stupid things and I have no plan
>> or desire to do so again.  I'm also not going to spend hours reinstalling
>> Gentoo either.  If, more than likely when, the init thingy fails, I'll be
>> installing something else and I'll most my last sign off message here.  One
>> thing about Linux, there are plenty of distros to pick from .  I love Gentoo
>> but I like to be able to boot up without dealing with a init thingy that I
>> have to fix when it goes belly up.
>>
>> Dale
>>
> I don't know why people keep humoring this kind of explanation for
> systemd, udev, or /usr FUD, but this is not a rational way to think. It's
> the same kind of excuse to say "I'm never going to use any kind of Linux,
> even Android, because I tried it 3 or 4 times when it was on floppies,
> and I couldn't get it to work".
>
> I'm really sorry about your terrible experience with "init thingies" in the
> past, but you've got to face the facts:
> 1) most distros today, Kubuntu included, bundle an "init thingy"
> and it works flawlessly for them.
> 2) you really, seriously, have to own up to the fact that your init thingy
> failing was very likely your fault (because of 1)
> 3) managing "init thingies" has gotten ridiculously easy over time as
> compared to when you manually had to build them
>
> Especially that number 2 part. I mean, let's not forget that character
> of Gentoo as a distribution. Or heck, even *nix distributions in general.
> *nix distributions give you a lot of tools to arrange your systems the
> way you want, i.e. choice, but it is always implicitly under the assumption
> that the choice you're making is an *informed* choice.
>
> That's why you're asked to read the manual, or check the readmes,
> or check the sample configs, and in this day and age, do a basic search
> for working examples, before asking questions. *nix is not, and has
> never been about being "polite" to users who don't know what they
> are doing, and has always been about being efficient to users who do.
>
> I've been recommended to put it "over the top" bluntly before, so:
> 1) STOP. FREAKING. BEING. IRRATIONAL.
> 2) STOP BLAMING INIT THINGIES FOR YOUR MISTAKES. THE DAMNED
> THINGS WORK.
> 3) If you're scared of doing an init thingy *manually*, just read and do
> the howto of the simplest init thingy manager in town (dracut? genkernel?).
> It surely takes less time and effort than migrating to Kubuntu or whatever.

Already tried making a init thingy from a really nice howto, Gentoo one
I think.  Failed big time.  Heck, the init thingy barely even loaded
before it failed.  I seem to recall posting on here.  As far as I know,
no one knew how to fix it or what was wrong.  The dracut one worked but
if it ever failed, I'm in the same boat, no freaking clue how to fix it
or where to start and if I can't boot, no help either.  So just to
update, my most recent experience wasn't to good either.  It isn't all
about YEARS ago.  It is also about more recent attempts. 

One thing about Kubuntu and other distros, it installs in a fraction of
time that Gentoo does.  Also, I don't have to fiddle with the init
thingy, it does it and hopefully correctly.  If not, reinstall.  If that
happens to often, try something else. 

May be FUD to you but it is real to me. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2013 23:41, Dale wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On 29/09/2013 18:33, Dale wrote:
>>>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>>>>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>>>>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
>>> If not, then what was it?  You seem to know what it was that started it
>>> so why not share?
>>>
>> He already said it. Someone added a hard disk to a PDP-9 (or was it an 11?)
>>
>> Literally. It all traces back to that. In those days there was no such
>> thing as volume management or raid. If you added a (seriously expensive)
>> disk the only feasible way to get it's storage in the system was to
>> mount it as a separate volume.
>>
>> >From that one single action this entire mess of separate /usr arose as
>> folks discovered more and more reasons to consider it good and keep it
>> around
>>
> 
> That wasn't the question tho.  My question wasn't about many years ago
> but who made the change that broke support for a seperate /usr with no
> init thingy.  The change that happened in the past few years.
> 
> I think I got my answer already tho.  Seems William Hubbs answered it
> but I plan to read his message again.  Different thread tho.



Nobody "broke" it.

It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some
random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to
work out fine that is broken.

It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use
the code in /usr at that point in the sequence. More and more we are
seeing that this is no longer the case.

So no-one broke it with a specific commit. It has always been broken by
design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
fluke. IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 06:10:46PM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote

> From REDHATs or SuSEs perspective seperate /usr is not a problem.
> Putting lvm/bluetooth/mdraid/whateverthefuckyoumightneed there was
> and is not a problem too. Thanks to initrds&co.

  And if I wanted to run bleeping Redhat Fedora, I'd run bleeping Redhat
Fedora.  I want GNU/Linu-x, not GNOME/Lenna-x.

> They are using them for AGES and it works fine.

  * Loading firmware into the kernel worked fine for AGES, until Kay
    Seivers broke udev... https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/2/303

  * Everybody's single-NIC machine came up with eth0 for AGES, until Kay
    Seivers broke udev.  And calling the new setup "predictable" is
    George Orwell 1984 doublespeak.  Let's see you walk up to an unknown
    machine and "predict" what the NIC is going to come up as.

  * Separate /usr worked fine for AGES, until... Do you see a pattern
    developing here?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark David Dumlao wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 1:31 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used Mandrake.
>>> It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one reason I left
>>> Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either but one reason I
>>> chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of that.  Now, whether
>>> it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init thingy just because someone
>>> doesn't want to put files where they should be which is not inside /usr.
>>>
>>> So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and it
>>> fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.  I done went
>>> down the road of trying to fix one of those stupid things and I have no plan
>>> or desire to do so again.  I'm also not going to spend hours reinstalling
>>> Gentoo either.  If, more than likely when, the init thingy fails, I'll be
>>> installing something else and I'll most my last sign off message here.  One
>>> thing about Linux, there are plenty of distros to pick from .  I love Gentoo
>>> but I like to be able to boot up without dealing with a init thingy that I
>>> have to fix when it goes belly up.
>>>
>>> Dale
>>>
>> I don't know why people keep humoring this kind of explanation for
>> systemd, udev, or /usr FUD, but this is not a rational way to think. It's
>> the same kind of excuse to say "I'm never going to use any kind of Linux,
>> even Android, because I tried it 3 or 4 times when it was on floppies,
>> and I couldn't get it to work".
>>
>> I'm really sorry about your terrible experience with "init thingies" in the
>> past, but you've got to face the facts:
>> 1) most distros today, Kubuntu included, bundle an "init thingy"
>> and it works flawlessly for them.
>> 2) you really, seriously, have to own up to the fact that your init thingy
>> failing was very likely your fault (because of 1)
>> 3) managing "init thingies" has gotten ridiculously easy over time as
>> compared to when you manually had to build them
>>
>> Especially that number 2 part. I mean, let's not forget that character
>> of Gentoo as a distribution. Or heck, even *nix distributions in general.
>> *nix distributions give you a lot of tools to arrange your systems the
>> way you want, i.e. choice, but it is always implicitly under the assumption
>> that the choice you're making is an *informed* choice.
>>
>> That's why you're asked to read the manual, or check the readmes,
>> or check the sample configs, and in this day and age, do a basic search
>> for working examples, before asking questions. *nix is not, and has
>> never been about being "polite" to users who don't know what they
>> are doing, and has always been about being efficient to users who do.
>>
>> I've been recommended to put it "over the top" bluntly before, so:
>> 1) STOP. FREAKING. BEING. IRRATIONAL.
>> 2) STOP BLAMING INIT THINGIES FOR YOUR MISTAKES. THE DAMNED
>> THINGS WORK.
>> 3) If you're scared of doing an init thingy *manually*, just read and do
>> the howto of the simplest init thingy manager in town (dracut? genkernel?).
>> It surely takes less time and effort than migrating to Kubuntu or whatever.
>
> Already tried making a init thingy from a really nice howto, Gentoo one
> I think.  Failed big time.  Heck, the init thingy barely even loaded
> before it failed.  I seem to recall posting on here.  As far as I know,
> no one knew how to fix it or what was wrong.  The dracut one worked but
> if it ever failed, I'm in the same boat, no freaking clue how to fix it
> or where to start and if I can't boot, no help either.  So just to
> update, my most recent experience wasn't to good either.  It isn't all
> about YEARS ago.  It is also about more recent attempts.

Meanwhile, for more stupidly over the top blunt trauma:
Please grow up and read your excuses for what they are. You
(1) failed to make an init thingy manually
(2) refuse to use a known working system that thousands use
on account of GREMLINS
and
(3) threaten to replace it with another working system that thousands use.
but no gremlins here!

At the end of they day, you don't want to learn how to do it "the hard way". So
do it the easy way and be done with your troubles. If you don't want to do it
EITHER way fine, but stop pretending that it's anything else but a problem
with your attitude. You're being exactly the kind of user that unpaid
volunteer devs don't want to waste time having to support.
-- 
This email is:    [ ] actionable   [ ] fyi        [x] social
Response needed:  [ ] yes          [x] up to you  [ ] no
Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [ ] soon       [x] none

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 18:41, schrieb Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike):
> El 29/09/13 18:03, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
>> Am 29.09.2013 17:12, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
>>> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>>
>>>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>>>> the root cause of the problem.
>>>>
>>>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>>>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>>>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>>>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>>>> blame too.
>>>>
>>>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>>>
>>> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of
>>> UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain
>>> things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly,
>>> the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly,
>>> but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root
>>> and usr.
>>>
>> in the very early days /usr did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone added a harddisk.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
> I'm going to show the lack of sense of this argument:
> in the very early days linux did not exist in the first space and was
> only created because someone got a 386.
>
> Not really a good reason to keep it around.

wrong analogy and it goes down from here. Really.
>
> in the very early days GNU did not exist in the first space and was
> only created because someone jammed a printer.
>
> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>
> in the very early days Gentoo did not exist in the first space and was
> only created because someone added a processor.
>
> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>
> in the very early days hardening did not exist in the first space and was
> only created because someone added security.
>
> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>
> in the very early days Gnome did not exist in the first space and was
> only created because someone got a graphics card.
>
> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>
> I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the pattern there.
>
> Ohh and BTW, /usr was not just added because someone added a harddrive,
> in most cases it was used to allow machines contain a very small system
> on / which was enough to just boot and mount a networked system (/usr)
> containing most of the software. This allowed for cheaper deployment of
> machines since the hard drive could be smaller as it wouldn't need to
> have all the data locally. Yeah, if this sounds familiar is because this
> was later moved to initramfs.

no, network'ed file systems came a lot later.
Initially /usr was added because one harddisk was full. Really, that is
the whole reason for its (broken) existance.


>
>>> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never
>>> terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home
>>> filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill
>>> all availab;e space, and users collect *things*
>> and a seperate /home does not create any problems.
>> /var is much more prone to accidentally fill up then /usr ever was.
> You are jst getting it wrong, /var was kept locally as the data there
> was supposed to change from machine to machine.

no, you just don't understand what I wrote.
People told other people to keep /usr seperate so / may not fill up by
accident.

That advise always was murky at best. Outright stupid is a good
description too.

/usr is not prone to much changes. So if your / fits the contents of
/usr just fine, there is pretty much no risk.
/var on the other hand tends to explode - but a lot of people never got
told to put /var on a seperate disk.

If you ever realized that a tens of gigabyte logfile just made your box
unbootable, you learnt a lot that day.
>>> Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and
>>> diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.
>>>
>>> By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to
>>> not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three
>>> filesystem layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be
>>> like Topsy (she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as
>>> "distributions" arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions
>>> became a real concern to some and standardization offorts were
>>> encouraged.
>>>
>>> The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem
>>> Hierarch Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V
>>> definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added
>>> more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.
>>>
>>> THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding
>>> all the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet
>>> even then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things
>>> started falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the
>>> Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The
>>> fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted
>>> and certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.
>> too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.
> Too bad separate /usr is much older than initramfs.

too bad that initramfs and initrd are pretty good solutions to the
problem of hidden breakage caused by seperate /usr.
If you are smart enough to setup an nfs server, I suppose you are smart
enough to run dracut/genkernel&co.

>>> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army
>>> marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke
>>> off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain
>>> flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>>>
>>> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of
>>> the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME
>>> camp.
>>> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat"
>>> Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler
>>> explanation.
>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
> True, fingers here should be pointed into another direction like systemd.

systemd is not the first package to break.
>>> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required
>>> for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
>> what? that you need an initrd? That is so bad?
> It may be, there is people which may not have enough free space ob /boot
> for example.

and now we are deeply into kidding territory. How small is that boot? 3mb?
>> Are you kidding me?
> I doubt it, instead you seem to be just trolling, see your own arguments

well, I haven't seen any arguments from you so far. So who is the troll
again?

>>> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and
>>> Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>>>
>> no thank you. But if I might add one: you are making an elephant out of
>> a gnat.
> To me it looks like youu are making a gnat out of an elephant.

what is the elephant? Running an extra command on kernel updates?
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 5:15 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Those numbers are not likely to change much with time, with one exception:
>
> /usr/src
>
> That can get real big real quick if you don't clean up kernel sources
> often. Ideally, you'd make that a suitably sized LV and mount it seperately.

Yeah, I always keep 2 or 3 known good kernels, and clean out the old 
stuff, so no worries there.

> The other space consumer is /usr/share with it's many documentation
> files. But those too tend to be stable once you have everything
> installed. 5G free out of 19G is ~75% space in use which is perfectly
> acceptable for this case.
>
> Regular monitoring of the state of your machines will tell you if space
> usage increases so you can investigate and deal with it timeously.
>
> I assume you long since moved portage and it's storage directories out
> of /usr into /var?

Hmmm... No, I never did that myself...

Wow...

moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:19:01 : ~
  # du -sh /usr/*
85M     /usr/bin
131M    /usr/include
0       /usr/lib
11M     /usr/lib32
530M    /usr/lib64
51M     /usr/libexec
15M     /usr/local
7.8G    /usr/portage
21M     /usr/sbin
509M    /usr/share
3.9G    /usr/src
0       /usr/tmp
7.0M    /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:26:30 : ~
  #

Is this the official gentoo way now? Will a new/fresh virgin install 
have /var/portage instead of /usr/portage?

I can eliminate almost 8GB by moving portage and its storage directories...

I don't recall seeing a news item about that...

But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I 
don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults unless 
there is a very good reason to do so.

But, is there some official gentoo docs online explaining how to do this?

Something more to think about...

Also - is there any kind of maintenance I shoudl be doing on 
/usr/portage to clean old cruft out? Or does portage maintain it already.

:)

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-29 5:35 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tanstaafl wrote:
>> Ok, but... everything I've read and personal experience over the years
>> shows that space required for /usr should not change much, especially
>> constantly grow over time (like requirements for /home can and will)-
>> it may fluctuate (increase, decrease) *a little* over time, but it
>> definitely should not grow substantially, so, if you had to resize it,
>> most likely it is because you simply didn't allocate enough room to
>> start with.

> So my experience doesn't matter any then?

Dale, that is NOT what I said, and nothing I am saying is intended to be 
offensive.

> My /usr does vary and sometimes varies quite a bit.

The question you should be asking yourself then, is WHY?

> That is why I had to resize the thing. Saying that I didn't make it
> large enough to begin with isn't the point.

It is precisely the point...

The fact is, there is nothing in there that *should* vary much (once 
your system is fully installed) - unless you are using it in some 
non-standard way, and/or not occasionally cleaning out /usr/src (as Alan 
pointed out)... and if either of those is the case, then as I said, it 
is your own fault that you needed to resize it.

Don't you see how contradictory it is to say that you will change from 
gentoo to distro-x because gentoo has made a change that requires you to 
either merge /usr into / or use an 'init thingy', when distro-x, that 
you say you will change to, USES AN INIT THINGY? Doesn't that sound 
irrational to you?

What would be logical and rational would be to either:

a) learn how to use an init thingy (which from some more reading I've 
been doing, doesn't look quite as bad as it seemed initially), or

b) determine what is a sane size for /usr, make / an appropriate size to 
subsume it, and merge it into /.

Now, if you don't have enough room in / to merge it, then obviously it 
will be more painful, but once it is done, you never have to worry about 
it again - and no init thingy.

> When people use LVM, the reason they use it is so that we can resize
> things when needed.

Yes, and I use LVM - but again, this is only important for dirs/mnt 
points that have the potential to consume more and more disk space... 
that potential is simply not there for (a properly configured and 
maintained) /usr...

> And what is rational for you, is not rational to me.  Since you can
> dismiss mine, I can dismiss yours too.   Funny how that works huh?

Yep... and you can also dismiss my claim that jumping off that 1,000' 
cliff won't result in you going splat, but it doesn't change the fact 
that if you jump off of it, you WILL go splat. I just wouldn't get the 
chance to say I told you so.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 30.09.2013 00:06, schrieb Walter Dnes:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 06:10:46PM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote
>
>> From REDHATs or SuSEs perspective seperate /usr is not a problem.
>> Putting lvm/bluetooth/mdraid/whateverthefuckyoumightneed there was
>> and is not a problem too. Thanks to initrds&co.
>   And if I wanted to run bleeping Redhat Fedora, I'd run bleeping Redhat
> Fedora.  I want GNU/Linu-x, not GNOME/Lenna-x.

luckily nobody forces you to install gnome, systemd or pulseaudio.

You don't have to do anything unless you:
have /usr on a seperate partition
no initrd.

If you have no initrd: genkernel

it will create one for you. Very easy to use.

>
>> They are using them for AGES and it works fine.
>   * Loading firmware into the kernel worked fine for AGES, until Kay
>     Seivers broke udev... https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/2/303
different story.

>   * Everybody's single-NIC machine came up with eth0 for AGES, until Kay
>     Seivers broke udev.  And calling the new setup "predictable" is
>     George Orwell 1984 doublespeak.  Let's see you walk up to an unknown
>     machine and "predict" what the NIC is going to come up as.
and you could predict with the old setup?
If think these new names are as stupid as it gets, but I had enough pain
in the past with multi-nic boxes shuffling eth0, eth1, ethn+1...
randomly on reboots. That was fun.

>
>   * Separate /usr worked fine for AGES, until... Do you see a pattern
>     developing here?
>
seperate /usr has stopped working fine AGES AGO. Just some setups were
lucky enough not to stumble over the wreckage and fall into the shards.

Only worse than breakage is silent breakage that seems to be ok. Until
the day where some minor and arcane change fucks you up.

I have to admit: I don't use init'thingies' - because I don't have to.
But back when I played around with different RAID setups I was prepared
to use one - because I am not stupid. If I want something to work that
needs an 'initthingie', I don't complain and bitch, I read up on
'initthingies'.

Besides, AFAIR Dale is the only one who had ever problems with
'initthingies' on this list. And Dale has a lot of problems with stuff
that works for everybody else.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 29.09.2013 19:58, schrieb Tanstaafl:
> On 2013-09-28 4:17 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>
>>>> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
>>>> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
>>>> for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
>>>> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
>>>
>>> Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
>>> separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
>>> <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
>>> patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
>>> appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
>>> round here.)
>>
>> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction,
>> now it
>> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
>> increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.
>
> So the solution is to give users one MONTH to prepare? Why not 6
> months, or better, a year? What for gods sake is the rush???

one month to run genkernel is more than enough. And that this point was
approaching was clear - what, 2 years ago? At least?

>
> Where are the links/pointers to the INTERNAL discussions of this
> decision? I seriously want to know. If gentoo devs are not willing to
> provide a 'paper trail' for how this decision was arrived at, and let
> others judge their decisions based on the merits of their arguments,
> then what does that say about their true motivations/intentions?

marc.info --> gentoo-dev

>
> Again, I don't have a problem necessarily with what is being decided
> (no separate /usr without an initramfs), my problem is with the
> implementation - giving us one MONTH before we can expect possible
> breakage with each and every update.

No, you already can expect possible breakage with each and every update.
In 4 weeks they will stop listening to your complains.

>
> The other HUGE thing that worries me, and has me seriously considering
> switching to FreeBSD NOW, is, maybe there really is a secret,
> underlying ulterior motive to force both systemd AND an initramfs for
> everyone in ALL use cases. If that is the case, then say so now, and
> give those of us who do not want this advanced notice, and I'll just
> plan on setting my gentoo box to never update on Nov 1, and start
> working on learning FreeBSD and if necessary, pay someone to help me
> migrate services to it.

so do it. You will be a lot happier there. I am sure. With forcing llvm
etc....

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 337 bytes --]

On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 23:33:55 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> And it also prevents him from using The One True Filesystem That Will
> Rule Them All and In the Darkness Bind Them:
> 
> ZFS

Now if that was included in the kernel, none of this thread would
matter :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Life's a cache, and then you flush...

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Mark David Dumlao wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Mark David Dumlao wrote:
>>> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 1:31 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used Mandrake.
>>>> It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one reason I left
>>>> Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either but one reason I
>>>> chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of that.  Now, whether
>>>> it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init thingy just because someone
>>>> doesn't want to put files where they should be which is not inside /usr.
>>>>
>>>> So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and it
>>>> fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.  I done went
>>>> down the road of trying to fix one of those stupid things and I have no plan
>>>> or desire to do so again.  I'm also not going to spend hours reinstalling
>>>> Gentoo either.  If, more than likely when, the init thingy fails, I'll be
>>>> installing something else and I'll most my last sign off message here.  One
>>>> thing about Linux, there are plenty of distros to pick from .  I love Gentoo
>>>> but I like to be able to boot up without dealing with a init thingy that I
>>>> have to fix when it goes belly up.
>>>>
>>>> Dale
>>>>
>>> I don't know why people keep humoring this kind of explanation for
>>> systemd, udev, or /usr FUD, but this is not a rational way to think. It's
>>> the same kind of excuse to say "I'm never going to use any kind of Linux,
>>> even Android, because I tried it 3 or 4 times when it was on floppies,
>>> and I couldn't get it to work".
>>>
>>> I'm really sorry about your terrible experience with "init thingies" in the
>>> past, but you've got to face the facts:
>>> 1) most distros today, Kubuntu included, bundle an "init thingy"
>>> and it works flawlessly for them.
>>> 2) you really, seriously, have to own up to the fact that your init thingy
>>> failing was very likely your fault (because of 1)
>>> 3) managing "init thingies" has gotten ridiculously easy over time as
>>> compared to when you manually had to build them
>>>
>>> Especially that number 2 part. I mean, let's not forget that character
>>> of Gentoo as a distribution. Or heck, even *nix distributions in general.
>>> *nix distributions give you a lot of tools to arrange your systems the
>>> way you want, i.e. choice, but it is always implicitly under the assumption
>>> that the choice you're making is an *informed* choice.
>>>
>>> That's why you're asked to read the manual, or check the readmes,
>>> or check the sample configs, and in this day and age, do a basic search
>>> for working examples, before asking questions. *nix is not, and has
>>> never been about being "polite" to users who don't know what they
>>> are doing, and has always been about being efficient to users who do.
>>>
>>> I've been recommended to put it "over the top" bluntly before, so:
>>> 1) STOP. FREAKING. BEING. IRRATIONAL.
>>> 2) STOP BLAMING INIT THINGIES FOR YOUR MISTAKES. THE DAMNED
>>> THINGS WORK.
>>> 3) If you're scared of doing an init thingy *manually*, just read and do
>>> the howto of the simplest init thingy manager in town (dracut? genkernel?).
>>> It surely takes less time and effort than migrating to Kubuntu or whatever.
>> Already tried making a init thingy from a really nice howto, Gentoo one
>> I think.  Failed big time.  Heck, the init thingy barely even loaded
>> before it failed.  I seem to recall posting on here.  As far as I know,
>> no one knew how to fix it or what was wrong.  The dracut one worked but
>> if it ever failed, I'm in the same boat, no freaking clue how to fix it
>> or where to start and if I can't boot, no help either.  So just to
>> update, my most recent experience wasn't to good either.  It isn't all
>> about YEARS ago.  It is also about more recent attempts.
> Meanwhile, for more stupidly over the top blunt trauma:
> Please grow up and read your excuses for what they are. You
> (1) failed to make an init thingy manually
> (2) refuse to use a known working system that thousands use
> on account of GREMLINS
> and
> (3) threaten to replace it with another working system that thousands use.
> but no gremlins here!
>
> At the end of they day, you don't want to learn how to do it "the hard way". So
> do it the easy way and be done with your troubles. If you don't want to do it
> EITHER way fine, but stop pretending that it's anything else but a problem
> with your attitude. You're being exactly the kind of user that unpaid
> volunteer devs don't want to waste time having to support.

And that is your opinon which is pretty much useless and wrong to boot. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 30.09.2013 00:53, schrieb Tanstaafl:
> On 2013-09-29 5:15 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Those numbers are not likely to change much with time, with one
>> exception:
>>
>> /usr/src
>>
>> That can get real big real quick if you don't clean up kernel sources
>> often. Ideally, you'd make that a suitably sized LV and mount it
>> seperately.
>
> Yeah, I always keep 2 or 3 known good kernels, and clean out the old
> stuff, so no worries there.
>
>> The other space consumer is /usr/share with it's many documentation
>> files. But those too tend to be stable once you have everything
>> installed. 5G free out of 19G is ~75% space in use which is perfectly
>> acceptable for this case.
>>
>> Regular monitoring of the state of your machines will tell you if space
>> usage increases so you can investigate and deal with it timeously.
>>
>> I assume you long since moved portage and it's storage directories out
>> of /usr into /var?
>
> Hmmm... No, I never did that myself...
>
> Wow...
>
> moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:19:01 : ~
>  # du -sh /usr/*
> 85M     /usr/bin
> 131M    /usr/include
> 0       /usr/lib
> 11M     /usr/lib32
> 530M    /usr/lib64
> 51M     /usr/libexec
> 15M     /usr/local
> 7.8G    /usr/portage
> 21M     /usr/sbin
> 509M    /usr/share
> 3.9G    /usr/src
> 0       /usr/tmp
> 7.0M    /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
> moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:26:30 : ~
>  #
>
> Is this the official gentoo way now? Will a new/fresh virgin install
> have /var/portage instead of /usr/portage?
>
> I can eliminate almost 8GB by moving portage and its storage
> directories...
>
> I don't recall seeing a news item about that...
>
> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I
> don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults
> unless there is a very good reason to do so.
>
> But, is there some official gentoo docs online explaining how to do this?
>
> Something more to think about...
>
> Also - is there any kind of maintenance I shoudl be doing on
> /usr/portage to clean old cruft out? Or does portage maintain it already.
>
> :)
>
>

df -h        
Dateisystem    Größe Benutzt Verf. Verw% Eingehängt auf
/dev/root        59G     33G   24G   58% /
devtmpfs        7,8G       0  7,8G    0% /dev
tmpfs           1,6G    712K  1,6G    1% /run
shm             7,8G    1,1M  7,8G    1% /dev/shm
cgroup_root      10M       0   10M    0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1       197M     17M  181M    9% /boot/efi
/dev/sde1       110G     82G   23G   79% /home/energyman
tmpfs           1,0G    3,4M 1021M    1% /tmp
zfstank/data    3,6T    1,9T  1,8T   52% /mnt/data
zfstank/var     100G     16G   85G   16% /var
zfstank         1,8T    256K  1,8T    1% /zfstank

and I put PORTDIR into /var ages ago. I hate 'moving targets' like
PORTDIR in a static place like /usr.
7,8G    /var/portage
6,5G    /var/packages

but seriously, if seperate /usr is so important for you - running
genkernel really IS easy...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 16:48:22 -0500, Dale wrote:

> > They are not the same. Your stating that they are the same to you is
> > effectively saying "I know what I believe, don't bother me with the
> > real facts".
> 
> They are the same to me as yet one more point of failure that I DO NOT
> want.  I have dealt with those in the past and I don't want either of
> them and I don't care of it is called "cute teddy bears" or whatever. 
> My point still stands, it is one more thing between grub and the kernel
> and I don't want it. 

You may have the same reason for not wanting to use either, but that does
not make them the same.

I detest both cabbage and spinach, I refuse to eat either, but I wouldn't
try to claim they were the same vegetable.

> >> Provided that the old one works tho right?  What if I update and it
> >> breaks more than one thing?   Then what? 

> > That's got nothing to do with the kernel, initramfs or separate /usr.
> > Once init is running, all that is history, it's done its job. If
> > something subsequently fails, it has nothing to do with mounting /
> > and /usr (which is all the initramfs does).

> If I select what to boot in grub and it fails, there I sit.  If I try
> another and it fails, there I sit.  I have enough issues at times
> already.  I don't want one more that already has a bad, VERY bad,
> history with me.  I have enough fun with the kernel at times. 

Once you have installed a kernel, you never update it. You may compile
another one with different settings, or install a different version, but
the kernel you installed is not updated. Your kernel is about the only
thing not affected by, or at risk of being broken by, updates, because
nothing is ever overwritten, unlike just about every other update.

> >> To ME, a init thingy is a init thingy.  That's why I call them all
> >> init thingys.  To ME, both are apples.  One may be green and another
> >> red but both are still apples. 
> > Please, don't ever offer to feed me :-)

> You would be surprised, I am one heck of a cook. 

Never tempt me with food, I may take you up on it one day. Just don't ever
offer me any of those green thingies :P


-- 
Neil Bothwick

I'm in shape ... Rounds a shape isn't it?

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 16:35:21 -0500, Dale wrote:

> So my experience doesn't matter any then?  My /usr does vary and
> sometimes varies quite a bit.  That is why I had to resize the thing. 
> Saying that I didn't make it large enough to begin with isn't the
> point.  When people use LVM, the reason they use it is so that we can
> resize things when needed. 

On a desktop system, it is not unusual for /usr usage to vary, as you
install, and maybe remove, various packages as your needs change.

As for not making it large enough to begin with, isn't one of the
advantages of using LVM that you don't need to try to guess future usage
and only need to make the LV large enough for today's needs. That's one
of the main reasons I used LVM, before The One True Way[tm] was available
on Linux.

Keep on using LVM if it is right for you, and it apparently is, but you
will have to compromise on using an initramfs to do so reliably in the
future.

I seriously recommend you look at the Wiki page on making your own
initramfs. One of the problems people have with them, and I was one of
them, is that they are a black box, a binary blob that does some magic to
get your system booted. Playing around with creating your own shows you
just how simple and basic they really are, a busybox binary and a couple
of lines of shell script to mount / and /usr. If you fear the unknown,
get to know it.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Having children will turn you into your parents.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 18:06:15 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

>   * Loading firmware into the kernel worked fine for AGES, until Kay
>     Seivers broke udev... https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/2/303
> 
>   * Everybody's single-NIC machine came up with eth0 for AGES, until Kay
>     Seivers broke udev.  And calling the new setup "predictable" is
>     George Orwell 1984 doublespeak.  Let's see you walk up to an unknown
>     machine and "predict" what the NIC is going to come up as.
> 
>   * Separate /usr worked fine for AGES, until... Do you see a pattern
>     developing here?

Yes, everything was working fine until Kay Sievers single-handedly broke
it all. Meanwhile the entire Linux community sat back and watched this
wanton destruction and not one of them lifted a finger to prevent it.

That is the most believable scenario posted so far.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

0 and 1. Now what could be so hard about that?

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-29 5:35 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> Ok, but... everything I've read and personal experience over the years
>>> shows that space required for /usr should not change much, especially
>>> constantly grow over time (like requirements for /home can and will)-
>>> it may fluctuate (increase, decrease) *a little* over time, but it
>>> definitely should not grow substantially, so, if you had to resize it,
>>> most likely it is because you simply didn't allocate enough room to
>>> start with.
>
>> So my experience doesn't matter any then?
>
> Dale, that is NOT what I said, and nothing I am saying is intended to
> be offensive.
>
>> My /usr does vary and sometimes varies quite a bit.
>
> The question you should be asking yourself then, is WHY?

To me, it doesn't matter why it varies, it just does.  After each
update, I check to see what the partitions look like.  The biggest
change was going from KDE3 to KDE4.  That seemed to make things grow a
good bit.  Other things I install/uninstall seem to change things too.

>
>> That is why I had to resize the thing. Saying that I didn't make it
>> large enough to begin with isn't the point.
>
> It is precisely the point...
>
> The fact is, there is nothing in there that *should* vary much (once
> your system is fully installed) - unless you are using it in some
> non-standard way, and/or not occasionally cleaning out /usr/src (as
> Alan pointed out)... and if either of those is the case, then as I
> said, it is your own fault that you needed to resize it.
>
> Don't you see how contradictory it is to say that you will change from
> gentoo to distro-x because gentoo has made a change that requires you
> to either merge /usr into / or use an 'init thingy', when distro-x,
> that you say you will change to, USES AN INIT THINGY? Doesn't that
> sound irrational to you?

No, it doesn't.  On Gentoo, I HAVE to make the thing but don't know how
to fix it if it breaks.  On other distros, I don't have to make the
thing.  If it fails, at worst, I can reinstall in much less time than I
would spend trying to fix the silly thing.  Since I don't know how to
fix one and can't boot to get help, then the computer may as well be a
screen door on a submarine.  As I posted before, if something breaks and
I can't fix it, I replace it with something else that works.  That could
be why /usr varies so much too. 

>
> What would be logical and rational would be to either:
>
> a) learn how to use an init thingy (which from some more reading I've
> been doing, doesn't look quite as bad as it seemed initially), or
>
> b) determine what is a sane size for /usr, make / an appropriate size
> to subsume it, and merge it into /.
>
> Now, if you don't have enough room in / to merge it, then obviously it
> will be more painful, but once it is done, you never have to worry
> about it again - and no init thingy.

Actually, history proves that wrong too.  I started using LVM because I
got tired of having to rearrange my partitions and resize things.  That
was the whole reason I switched to LVM when I did.  Ask anyone on this
list that has been here long ehough.  I have had to move things around
LOTS of times because things grow including /usr and /var.  /home is a
different and unrelated thing.  Funny thing is, I did it several times
and never even posted about it. 

>
>> When people use LVM, the reason they use it is so that we can resize
>> things when needed.
>
> Yes, and I use LVM - but again, this is only important for dirs/mnt
> points that have the potential to consume more and more disk space...
> that potential is simply not there for (a properly configured and
> maintained) /usr...

See above. 

>
>> And what is rational for you, is not rational to me.  Since you can
>> dismiss mine, I can dismiss yours too.   Funny how that works huh?
>
> Yep... and you can also dismiss my claim that jumping off that 1,000'
> cliff won't result in you going splat, but it doesn't change the fact
> that if you jump off of it, you WILL go splat. I just wouldn't get the
> chance to say I told you so.
>
>

And what you are saying is not changing anything either.  I don't want
to mess with the init thingy.  If I do, first time it fails and a
solution isn't obvious, time to move on to something else.  I like my 16
year old washing machine and I have repaired things on it a few times. 
If it breaks and I can't fix it, time for a new washing machine.  Most
likely, a different brand and model too. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Daniel Campbell]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 09/28/2013 09:04 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 28/09/2013 13:32, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-27 7:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> No really,*why exactly*?
>> 
>> Because that was the RECOMMENDED WAY IN THE GENTOO HANDBOOK when
>> I first set this system up many years ago.
> 
> This was something almost all of us recommended way back then. Lord
> only knows why we recommeded that. Maybe it was small drives (which
> didn't have), maybe it was different mount options (which I never
> did and never saw anyone else do either), or maybe it was for thin
> clients (which I only ever saw in use once - Shuttleworth labs in
> University of Cape Town).
> 
> So why did we all (and I included myself) recommend this so much?
> Dude, I have no idea, but I *think* we were cargo-culting more than
> any other single factor.
> 
> 
>> I have no philosophical reason reason to stick with it, only a
>> (maybe irrational) fear of breaking things if I attempt to merge
>> it back into /.
>> 
>> This, combined with an intense (also maybe irrational) desire to
>> avoid like the plague using an initramfs, is why this decision to
>> FORCE me into a position of possibly having to break my system
>> (either by a filed attempt at merging /usr into /, or a failed
>> attampt at using an initramfs).
> 
> No-one is forcing you to do anything, the news item did not say
> that.
> 
> It says that if you do it, the devs will not support you and you
> are on your own. It also says that in the dev's opinion, the day
> when you can no longer support it either is probably not too far
> away
> 
>> I too sincerely hope eudev bypasses this issue.
> 
> This has nothing to do with eudev, not with udev
> 
>> The main thing about this that pisses me off is the lack of
>> enough warning... one month? Really? One month to compleyelt
>> rebuild a seerver that has been running flawlessly for many
>> years, just because someone doesn't like something that has been
>> done for many years?
> 
> 
> First, it is not one month, it is much longer. We've all been
> whinging about the issue for most of this year. Two, why do you
> think you need to rebuild the entire machine? You don't need to do
> that just to merge two filesystems.
> 
> To merge two filesystems, you just merge two filesystems. You
> don't rebuild anything. You might have some downtime though
> 
> Please see the news item for what it actually is, not something
> else.
> 
> 

Curious; how is merging two filesystems done? I don't have a separate
/usr and am completely unaffected by this change, but it's somewhat
interesting to me. /usr stores some pretty important data on it, and I
imagine you'd need to mount it somewhere else in order to move the
files from it to /'s /usr dir. Is a Live environment recommended
instead? How would you mitigate the leftover partition, assuming it's
not adjacent to /'s partition?

I don't run an initramfs, thankfully, but I keep a pretty simple
system in terms of filesystems: /, /boot, and /home.
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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

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Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 16:35:21 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>> So my experience doesn't matter any then?  My /usr does vary and
>> sometimes varies quite a bit.  That is why I had to resize the thing.
>> Saying that I didn't make it large enough to begin with isn't the
>> point.  When people use LVM, the reason they use it is so that we can
>> resize things when needed.
>
> On a desktop system, it is not unusual for /usr usage to vary, as you
> install, and maybe remove, various packages as your needs change.
>
> As for not making it large enough to begin with, isn't one of the
> advantages of using LVM that you don't need to try to guess future usage
> and only need to make the LV large enough for today's needs. That's one
> of the main reasons I used LVM, before The One True Way[tm] was available
> on Linux.
>
> Keep on using LVM if it is right for you, and it apparently is, but you
> will have to compromise on using an initramfs to do so reliably in the
> future.
>
> I seriously recommend you look at the Wiki page on making your own
> initramfs. One of the problems people have with them, and I was one of
> them, is that they are a black box, a binary blob that does some magic to
> get your system booted. Playing around with creating your own shows you
> just how simple and basic they really are, a busybox binary and a couple
> of lines of shell script to mount / and /usr. If you fear the unknown,
> get to know it.
>
>


I already did that.  I'm pretty sure the first try was following a
Gentoo wiki.  It failed.  I googled and I'm pretty sure I posted the
error on here to, I never got it to work and as far as I know, no one
had a fix either.  I just know it didn't work.  I then tried another
wiki and it also failed but differently.  I also tried doing the one
with it built into the kernel, wouldn't boot then either.  Dracut
worked, at least I guess it did, but if it ever breaks, no clue what to
do and if I can't boot, same boat again.  I'm staring at a error with no
clue how to fix it.

The point is, whether with or without a init thingy, first failed boot
that I can't readily fix, time to learn something else new.  A computer
that doesn't boot isn't of much use for me.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Daniel Campbell]

On 09/28/2013 12:31 PM, Dale wrote:
> William Hubbs wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 07:32:20PM -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:
>>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:57:06PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>> Bruce Hill wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>>>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
>>>>>> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale
>>>>> Do you have /usr separate from / ?
>>>>
>>>> Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
>>>> this problem tho.
>>>>
>>>> One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
>>>> partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
>>>> full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
>>>> it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol
>>>>
>>>> Dale
>>>
>>> You need to read the blog post listed in the news item, as it's not just
>>> specific to udev anymore.
>>
>> Bruce is correct; This issue is not specific to udev/eudev/mdev.
>>
>> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
>> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically for
>> this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
>> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
>>
>> If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what the
>> issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal with which
>> software is considered critical for booting.
>>
>> There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
>> have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you will
>> need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.
>>
>> I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs which I
>> built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there.
>>
>> I recommend that you familiarize yourself with genkernel or dracut and
>> build an initramfs. Since nothing is changing until at least
>> Nov 1, you can test your initramfs by adding an entry to your boot
>> loader configuration that uses it and get it set up correctly while you
>> can still fall back on booting without it.
>>
>> I do not recommend that anyone who has separate /usr "do nothing" at
>> this point. Please re-read the second paragraph of the news item.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> William
>>
> 
> One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used
> Mandrake.  It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one
> reason I left Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either
> but one reason I chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of
> that.  Now, whether it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init
> thingy just because someone doesn't want to put files where they should
> be which is not inside /usr.
> 
> So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and
> it fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.  I done
> went down the road of trying to fix one of those stupid things and I
> have no plan or desire to do so again.  I'm also not going to spend
> hours reinstalling Gentoo either.  If, more than likely when, the init
> thingy fails, I'll be installing something else and I'll most my last
> sign off message here.  One thing about Linux, there are plenty of
> distros to pick from .  I love Gentoo but I like to be able to boot up
> without dealing with a init thingy that I have to fix when it goes belly
> up.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-)
> 
> -- 
> I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
> how you interpreted my words!
> 

The best path for you seems to be a merge of / and /usr. I asked Alan
how to do this since he seemed knowledgeable about it. If he replies,
maybe his advice will be handy and save you a lot of trouble. It seems
clear to me that you want to avoid trouble, but looking at your options,
putting /usr in / is probably the least painful thing you can do, and it
won't require an initramfs. I don't like initramfs's either, but that's
because I'm lazy and don't like maintaining more than two things (kernel
and GRUB config) in order to boot.

Other distros use initramfs's for the most part, and more and more are
using systemd. Gentoo is pretty much one of the last distros that
supports booting without an initramfs and without systemd.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Greg Woodbury]

But I don't *want* to run a genkernel for reasons of my own.

I do not *want* to have to have an init* pseudo-filesystem for reasons 
of my own.

I may want to have a separate /usr for rrerasons of my own.

Distros that *force* me to do things I don't want to do, for whatever 
reasons they claim, are not going to remain in my favor for long.

Those claiming that a separate /usr has been broken for a while are, to 
be blunt, lying.  Certain programs and libraries were added or moved to 
/usr in dirext violation of established practice.  The massive 
objections of many folks were simply ignored and denigrated with extreme 
prejudice by certain folks who had acquired delusions of power beyond 
their proper roles.

There is *only* ONE Linux God - Linus Torvalds - and even he abandoned 
GNOME when cetain things were done.  (Nota Bene: somewhat tongue-in-cheek.)

"Against  stupidity, even the Gods strive in vain" and I suspect that 
Linus may not liek some of the shit going down, but is reluctantly 
dealing with the fallout.

-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury
redwolfe(at)gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 18:31:37 -0500, Daniel Campbell wrote:

> Curious; how is merging two filesystems done? I don't have a separate
> /usr and am completely unaffected by this change, but it's somewhat
> interesting to me. /usr stores some pretty important data on it, and I
> imagine you'd need to mount it somewhere else in order to move the
> files from it to /'s /usr dir. Is a Live environment recommended
> instead? How would you mitigate the leftover partition, assuming it's
> not adjacent to /'s partition?

For /usr you don't need a live CD, because the contents of /usr shouldn't
change unless you instal/remove something. You can make sure they don't
change during the merge by remounting read-only

mount /usr -o remount,ro
mkdir /newusr
rsync -a /usr/ /new/usr/
Comment out /usr line in /etc/fstab
mv /usr /oldusr
mv /newusr /usr
reboot
rmdir /oldusr

What you do with the old partition is up to you. In this case the
discussion was about /usr on LVM, so you just delete it and allocate the
space elsewhere when needed.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 43: Genuine imitation

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 19:52:30 -0400, Greg Woodbury wrote:

> But I don't *want* to run a genkernel for reasons of my own.
> 
> I do not *want* to have to have an init* pseudo-filesystem for reasons 
> of my own.
> 
> I may want to have a separate /usr for rrerasons of my own.

You can have whatever you want, no one is saying otherwise. All the news
item said was that Gentoo will no longer support such an arrangement. Thy
are not removing your choice to do it your way, only exercising their
choice to do things their way.

> Those claiming that a separate /usr has been broken for a while are, to 
> be blunt, lying.  Certain programs and libraries were added or moved to 
> /usr in dirext violation of established practice. 

If you are going to accuse people of lying, you should back it up with
something more specific than these vague accusations. What programs and
libraries were moved? Please don't say systemd, as it has already been
established that this was not forced by systemd and affects systems
running the Gentoo default of OpenRC.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 5: Twelve-ounce pound cake

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Daniel Campbell]

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On 09/29/2013 01:55 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 01:55:49PM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-28 6:36 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> So this brings us back to the essential technical problem that still
>>> needs to be solved on your machines:
>>>
>>> /usr needs to be available (and not only for BT keyboards) at the
>>> earliest possible opportunity - this is a technical constraint. To
>>> guarantee that, you need to either merge /usr with /, or use an
>>> initramfs to guarantee that /usr is available before anything else
>>> happens in userland.
>>>
>>> It*really*  is that simple. If you have a better solution than my last
>>> two choices, then I am all ears.
>>
>> Ok, and if this is all true, I can accept it.
> 
> Alan, this is a very good summary of the issues involved. Everyone on
> the list should go and read flameeyes' blog post then this summary.
> 
> Tanstaaf,
> 
> I am the OpenRC author/maintainer and a member of base-system. I can
> tell you that we are not discussing forcing systemd on everyone in
> Gentoo Linux as a default init system. I can also tell you that I am not
> aware of the Gentoo systemd team discussing this. Even if they were, a
> distro-wide change like this would have to be brought before the
> Council.
> 
> William
> 

I understand Gentoo has a much more structured way of making decisions
like systemd, but perhaps you aren't the best person to assuage fears. I
say this not because of anything you do, but your position. Arch Linux
used their sysvinit maintainer to calm fears of users before their
switch to systemd. I'm not saying that you are trying to do this at all,
but rather being OpenRC maintainer doesn't add much in the way of
credibility of your stance. Everything else (the lack of discussion on
it, the fact that the Council would have to vote on it) are much better
logical support for systemd not being forced.

I'm not sure if you knew about what happened with Arch, so I just
figured I'd point it out. I and others who switched from Arch to Gentoo
over the systemd debacle still remember the false promises (from the
sysvinit maintainer) that systemd won't be forced, when it was. So one's
position can't really be trusted, regardless of how much I and others
appreciate the work that goes into OpenRC.

No offense is intended, by the way. Just adding some context. I hope you
understand.


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[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[»Q«]

On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 09:25:05 +0100
Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sunday 29 Sep 2013 06:29:37 Walter Dnes wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 06:09:40PM -0500, Dale wrote
> >   
> > > Most likely, I'll install Kubuntu to start.  Then I may roam
> > > around and test other distros until I find one I like.  Thing is,
> > > I already have a starting point.  
> > 
> >   I'm already looking.
> > http://forums.funtoo.org/viewtopic.php?id=2265 and they also
> > dislike systemd.  I think I could get to like it.  See also
> > http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34  
> 
> Very interesting!  This looks as a logical way to put udev back in
> its userspace box and stop it breaking the OS, or did I understand it
> incorrectly?

Funtoo is using mdev.  drobbins plans to make make GNOME 3.8+ work
without systemd/udev as well, but so far he's been mum about how.

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Walter Dnes]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 01:00:06AM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote
> Am 30.09.2013 00:06, schrieb Walter Dnes:
> 
> >   * Everybody's single-NIC machine came up with eth0 for AGES, until Kay
> >     Seivers broke udev.  And calling the new setup "predictable" is
> >     George Orwell 1984 doublespeak.  Let's see you walk up to an unknown
> >     machine and "predict" what the NIC is going to come up as.
> and you could predict with the old setup?
> If think these new names are as stupid as it gets, but I had enough pain
> in the past with multi-nic boxes shuffling eth0, eth1, ethn+1...
> randomly on reboots. That was fun.

  If the udev people had made "net ifnames=0" the default, and allowed
the small percentage of multi-nic machine admins to set "net.ifnames=1",
this would not have been an issue.  Some corner case exotic setups
require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All the complaining
you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just fine with the
simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution rammed down their
throats.

> >   * Separate /usr worked fine for AGES, until... Do you see a pattern
> >     developing here?
> >
> seperate /usr has stopped working fine AGES AGO. Just some setups were
> lucky enough not to stumble over the wreckage and fall into the shards.

  I.e. the 99% who don't need initramfs before today.  Some corner case
exotic setups require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All
the complaining you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just
fine with the simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution
rammed down their throats.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 01:00:06AM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote
>> >   * Separate /usr worked fine for AGES, until... Do you see a pattern
>> >     developing here?
>> >
>> seperate /usr has stopped working fine AGES AGO. Just some setups were
>> lucky enough not to stumble over the wreckage and fall into the shards.
>
>   I.e. the 99% who don't need initramfs before today.  Some corner case
> exotic setups require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All
> the complaining you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just
> fine with the simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution
> rammed down their throats.

funny. In the Linux community, running an "init thingy" is the 99%. We peeps
with our custom kernels and builtin drivers are the 1%.

-- 
This email is:    [ ] actionable   [x] fyi        [ ] social
Response needed:  [ ] yes          [ ] up to you  [x] no
Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [ ] soon       [x] none

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 11:21 PM, Mark David Dumlao <madumlao@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 01:00:06AM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote
>>> >   * Separate /usr worked fine for AGES, until... Do you see a pattern
>>> >     developing here?
>>> >
>>> seperate /usr has stopped working fine AGES AGO. Just some setups were
>>> lucky enough not to stumble over the wreckage and fall into the shards.
>>
>>   I.e. the 99% who don't need initramfs before today.  Some corner case
>> exotic setups require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All
>> the complaining you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just
>> fine with the simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution
>> rammed down their throats.
>
> funny. In the Linux community, running an "init thingy" is the 99%. We peeps
> with our custom kernels and builtin drivers are the 1%.

And growing smaller. I used to compile *everything* in my kernels; I
had a warm fuzzy feeling when in my laptop I did lsmod, and nothing
was listed.

Then I started to use an initramfs, and I found quite elegant that you
can put everything in modules, since from the initramfs udev  will
take care of loading the necessary (and *only* the necessary).

Nowadays I have everything in modules; filesystems even. I'm still
using custom kernels thought.

And, on a personal note, I find a little quaint (and somehow naïve) to
think about (for example) bluetooth as a "corner case", when most of
us walk with a bluetooth enabled Linux computer on our pockets.

I want Gentoo Linux on my cellphone. And it's probably not going to
happen with OpenRC.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[»Q«]

On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:39:35 -0500
Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think I'll update that Kubuntu disk right quick while I am thinking
> about it.  Fall back plan just in case.  ;-)

Make sure you notify the Kubuntu mailing list of your contingency plans
in case Kubuntu's init thingy gives you trouble.  ;)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[pk]

On 2013-09-30 00:04, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some
> random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to
> work out fine that is broken.
> 
> It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use
> the code in /usr at that point in the sequence. More and more we are
> seeing that this is no longer the case.

So basically it wasn't broke before stuff started to use the code in
/usr. How isn't that breaking?

> So no-one broke it with a specific commit. It has always been broken by
> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
> fluke. IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.

If what you are saying is true then *everything* is broken "by design"
if something isn't available at boot time (may be /usr, may be /var or
whatever).

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 08:31, pk wrote:
> On 2013-09-30 00:04, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> 
>> It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some
>> random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to
>> work out fine that is broken.
>>
>> It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use
>> the code in /usr at that point in the sequence. More and more we are
>> seeing that this is no longer the case.
> 
> So basically it wasn't broke before stuff started to use the code in
> /usr. How isn't that breaking?
> 
>> So no-one broke it with a specific commit. It has always been broken by
>> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
>> fluke. IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.
> 
> If what you are saying is true then *everything* is broken "by design"
> if something isn't available at boot time (may be /usr, may be /var or
> whatever).



I never mentioned /var at all.

Go back and read again what I did write.





-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 01:08, Dale wrote:
>> At the end of they day, you don't want to learn how to do it "the hard way". So
>> > do it the easy way and be done with your troubles. If you don't want to do it
>> > EITHER way fine, but stop pretending that it's anything else but a problem
>> > with your attitude. You're being exactly the kind of user that unpaid
>> > volunteer devs don't want to waste time having to support.
> And that is your opinon which is pretty much useless and wrong to boot. 


Dale,

I've known you for 7 years. Now get over this init thingy thing you have
going. Seriously.





-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 01:40, Daniel Campbell wrote:
> The best path for you seems to be a merge of / and /usr. I asked Alan
> how to do this since he seemed knowledgeable about it. If he replies,
> maybe his advice will be handy and save you a lot of trouble. It seems
> clear to me that you want to avoid trouble, but looking at your options,
> putting /usr in / is probably the least painful thing you can do, and it
> won't require an initramfs. I don't like initramfs's either, but that's
> because I'm lazy and don't like maintaining more than two things (kernel
> and GRUB config) in order to boot.


I think I replied so a similar question from tanstaafl already, but
basically all you need to do is boot with a rescue disk, mount /usr
somewhere else and copy everything in it to the usr/ directory on /

But the devil is in the details and if anything will trip you up it's
the extact contents you have there and how much space you have
available. I don't know of any script around that automates it, so human
eyeballs is what it will take.

If you post the output of df -h, du -sh /usr, du -sh /usr/*, mount, and
the contents of fstab, loads of folks here can tell you how to proceed.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 06:14, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   If the udev people had made "net ifnames=0" the default, and allowed
> the small percentage of multi-nic machine admins to set "net.ifnames=1",
> this would not have been an issue.  Some corner case exotic setups
> require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All the complaining
> you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just fine with the
> simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution rammed down their
> throats.


No, that is just plain wrong.

Having interfaces on a multi-nic host come up as ethX where X is a
mostly random number is just so broken it beggars belief. Trust me, it
is zero fun when it happens and what makes it even worse if you have no
warning at all beforehand.

Go check out FreeBSD sometime and see how they number their nics, and
see how it is completely reliable every single time. Check Windows for
that matter, they also don't have the problem. Neither does MacOS.

All that happened is that Linux and udev got dragged screaming and
bitching into the 21st century wrt nic naming, and things are now in a
better situation they should have been in many many years ago. But, as
usual, people are resistant to change even when the change is something
that does indeed need to happen.




-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Sunday 29 September 2013 14:45:05 Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-29 2:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Tanstaafl wrote:
> >> The way I see it, if you cannot provide a rational answer to that
> >> question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to
> >> abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...
> > 
> > Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
> > resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.
> 
> Ok, but... everything I've read and personal experience over the years
> shows that space required for /usr should not change much, especially
> constantly grow over time (like requirements for /home can and will)- it
> may fluctuate (increase, decrease) *a little* over time, but it
> definitely should not grow substantially, so, if you had to resize it,
> most likely it is because you simply didn't allocate enough room to
> start with.

Then what would be a correct size for the "/" partition when putting "/usr" on 
there as well?
I have had no issues with giving "/" 500MB, "/boot" another 500MB and have 
everything else with minimal values on LVM and extending partitions without 
rebooting the machine whenever necessary.
If I am now forced to put "/usr" on "/", detailed steps on how to migrate all 
my systems succesfully with minimal downtime would be appreciated. Along with 
a size-indication that will:
1) Always be sufficient
2) Not be a waste of valuable diskspace


> > For me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.
> 
> Sorry, but rationality is not subjective. Just because something seems
> to be rational to you doesn't mean that it is.
> 
> You have still not stated a logical, rational reason for wanting a
> separate /usr.

Dale has, and so have I, see above.

> > I am the one doing things on my puter not you or anyone else. If the
> > init thingy fails, that will be me staring at a error message, not
> > you.
> 
> I don't want one of those things either, but that isn't what I was
> questioning you about.
> 
> Of course you can do whatever you want *and* are technically capable of
> on your own computer, but that doesn't automatically make those things
> logical or rational.
> 
> I did see one good case for a separate /usr (someone who was using
> ancient PATA drives, and something about striping for performance), but
> that was obviously a corner case...

Actually, it isn't a corner case.
Striping increases performance, I use it as well.
Why put all the software that I load when needed (and expect to be thrown out 
of memory when not used) on a single disk when you have the option to put all 
that on a RAID0 (striping) set?

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 00:14:08 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

> > seperate /usr has stopped working fine AGES AGO. Just some setups were
> > lucky enough not to stumble over the wreckage and fall into the
> > shards.  
> 
>   I.e. the 99% who don't need initramfs before today.  Some corner case
> exotic setups require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All
> the complaining you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just
> fine with the simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution
> rammed down their throats.

Separate /usr is broken, maybe "faulty" would be a better word. It's like
software bugs, not everyone hits every bug, if you don't use the buggy
bits of the program. But would you rather wait until the program stopped
working for you or have the bugs fixed before you ever saw them?

Also consider that this is about Gentoo support for separate /usr. They
are supporting it now, which means they are spending time on it that
could be devoted elsewhere. Their spending that time on it may well be
the reason you have been shielded from the problems caused by a
separate /usr. All the news item says is that the Gentoo devs are no
longer going to do that for you, and they have presented a couple of
solutions. You are free to find a third path, or even continue using a
separate /usr without initramfs in the hope or belief that it will not
break for you.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

You are about to give someone a piece of your mind,
something you can ill afford...

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 00:53, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-29 5:15 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Those numbers are not likely to change much with time, with one
>> exception:
>>
>> /usr/src
>>
>> That can get real big real quick if you don't clean up kernel sources
>> often. Ideally, you'd make that a suitably sized LV and mount it
>> seperately.
> 
> Yeah, I always keep 2 or 3 known good kernels, and clean out the old
> stuff, so no worries there.
> 
>> The other space consumer is /usr/share with it's many documentation
>> files. But those too tend to be stable once you have everything
>> installed. 5G free out of 19G is ~75% space in use which is perfectly
>> acceptable for this case.
>>
>> Regular monitoring of the state of your machines will tell you if space
>> usage increases so you can investigate and deal with it timeously.
>>
>> I assume you long since moved portage and it's storage directories out
>> of /usr into /var?
> 
> Hmmm... No, I never did that myself...
> 
> Wow...
> 
> moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:19:01 : ~
>  # du -sh /usr/*
> 85M     /usr/bin
> 131M    /usr/include
> 0       /usr/lib
> 11M     /usr/lib32
> 530M    /usr/lib64
> 51M     /usr/libexec
> 15M     /usr/local
> 7.8G    /usr/portage
> 21M     /usr/sbin
> 509M    /usr/share
> 3.9G    /usr/src
> 0       /usr/tmp
> 7.0M    /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
> moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:26:30 : ~
>  #

Apart from portage and src that all looks totally normal and unlikely to
vary much over time.



> Is this the official gentoo way now? Will a new/fresh virgin install
> have /var/portage instead of /usr/portage?

The new instaled default is to put all of portage on /var, whilst still
supporting old installs on /usr. This is no big deal in code, as it's
really just a string containing a base path


> I can eliminate almost 8GB by moving portage and its storage directories...

Or move them onto a dedictaed LV. This is a case where a different mount
point makes a lot of sense - we're all aware just how unique the tree is
in terms of fs performance - thousands of small files mostly smaller
than 2k in hundreds of directories. It's quite different to everything
else on /usr or even /var.

Same with distfiles, that too can move anywhere you want it to be, just
adjust one setting in make.conf

> I don't recall seeing a news item about that...

IIRC it wasn't a news item as such. Perhaps it was an elog from portage
itself.


> 
> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I
> don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults unless
> there is a very good reason to do so.

It's /var/portage for new installs. If you want it to be somewhere else,
just move it and adjust make.conf


> 
> But, is there some official gentoo docs online explaining how to do this?
> 
> Something more to think about...
> 
> Also - is there any kind of maintenance I shoudl be doing on
> /usr/portage to clean old cruft out? Or does portage maintain it already.

rsync takes care of all that.
You have eclean to keep distfiles tidy
binpkgs you need to clean up on your own, as portage has no way of
knowing what you want to keep. And local overlays fall in the same category


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

»Q« wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:39:35 -0500
> Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think I'll update that Kubuntu disk right quick while I am thinking
>> about it.  Fall back plan just in case.  ;-)
> Make sure you notify the Kubuntu mailing list of your contingency plans
> in case Kubuntu's init thingy gives you trouble.  ;)
>
>
>

Real simple, reinstall.  It takes a very short time compared to Gentoo. 
I used to install Mandrake in about 30 minutes and that was a complete
install on much slower hard drives and CD readers. 

I got that covered.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 11:36:02PM -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 11:21 PM, Mark David Dumlao <madumlao@gmail.com> wrote:

> And, on a personal note, I find a little quaint (and somehow naïve) to
> think about (for example) bluetooth as a "corner case", when most of
> us walk with a bluetooth enabled Linux computer on our pockets.

  Dalvik != GNU/Linux as we know it.  Exactly what percentage of
cellphones is running GNU/Linux as we know it, let alone Gentoo?

> I want Gentoo Linux on my cellphone. And it's probably not going to
> happen with OpenRC.

  I used to laugh at Windows users who got their OS dumbed down to a
useless mess, all in the name of "convergence with smartphones".  Now I
cry along with them.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 30/09/2013 01:08, Dale wrote:
>>> At the end of they day, you don't want to learn how to do it "the hard way". So
>>>> do it the easy way and be done with your troubles. If you don't want to do it
>>>> EITHER way fine, but stop pretending that it's anything else but a problem
>>>> with your attitude. You're being exactly the kind of user that unpaid
>>>> volunteer devs don't want to waste time having to support.
>> And that is your opinon which is pretty much useless and wrong to boot. 
>
> Dale,
>
> I've known you for 7 years. Now get over this init thingy thing you have
> going. Seriously.
>
>
>
>
>

Longer than that.  LOL 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 01:31, Daniel Campbell wrote:


> Curious; how is merging two filesystems done? I don't have a separate
> /usr and am completely unaffected by this change, but it's somewhat
> interesting to me. /usr stores some pretty important data on it, and I
> imagine you'd need to mount it somewhere else in order to move the
> files from it to /'s /usr dir. Is a Live environment recommended
> instead? How would you mitigate the leftover partition, assuming it's
> not adjacent to /'s partition?


Because /usr is continually in use, boot using a livecd of your choice.
In that environment, use fdisk (or whichever *disk you like) to make any
changes to partitions you know you will need.

Mount your gentoo / somewhere convenient
Mount your gentoo /usr somewhere convenient

copy the latter over to the former
edit fstab
reboot

It really is just a case of moving a large number of files around, but
because those very files are always in use you have to do it in livecd
environment.

There's no exact checklist one can follow to guarantee a 100% result
blindly. Instead, as this is Gentoo, we assume users built their system
knowing what they were doing and can appropriately deal with their
config themselves. RAID and LVM for example may need attention, but the
user is usually equipped to deal with that and knows what t do.


> 
> I don't run an initramfs, thankfully, but I keep a pretty simple
> system in terms of filesystems: /, /boot, and /home.
> 

-- 
Alan McKinnon
Systems Engineer^W Technician
Infrastructure Services
Internet Solutions

+27 11 575 7585


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Hinnerk van Bruinehsen]

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On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:57:12AM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 18:31:37 -0500, Daniel Campbell wrote:
>
> > Curious; how is merging two filesystems done? I don't have a separate
> > /usr and am completely unaffected by this change, but it's somewhat
> > interesting to me. /usr stores some pretty important data on it, and I
> > imagine you'd need to mount it somewhere else in order to move the
> > files from it to /'s /usr dir. Is a Live environment recommended
> > instead? How would you mitigate the leftover partition, assuming it's
> > not adjacent to /'s partition?
>
> For /usr you don't need a live CD, because the contents of /usr shouldn't
> change unless you instal/remove something. You can make sure they don't
> change during the merge by remounting read-only
>
> mount /usr -o remount,ro
> mkdir /newusr
> rsync -a /usr/ /new/usr/
> Comment out /usr line in /etc/fstab
> mv /usr /oldusr
> mv /newusr /usr
> reboot
> rmdir /oldusr
>
> What you do with the old partition is up to you. In this case the
> discussion was about /usr on LVM, so you just delete it and allocate the
> space elsewhere when needed.
>
>

You can even leave out the step of creating a new directory and moving it later
if you bind-mount you rootfs somewhere, e.g. /mnt/gentoo.
You may want to add some parameters to the call to rsync, though (e.g. those
that preserve permissions, xattrs (especially for SELinux or XT-PaX) and
owner/group (should be -pogX), possibly -x aswell (if you have other
filesystems under /usr (e.g. a discrete FS for the portage tree).

This would boil down to:

mount /usr -o remout,ro # just to make sure there are no changes
mount -o bind / /mnt/gentoo
rsync -apogXx /usr/ /mnt/usr/ # possibly fiddle around with the flags
comment out the /usr line in fstab
reboot

if everything's working: delete the old usr-partition (or do with it whatever
you like).

WKR
Hinnerk

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Sunday 29 September 2013 19:36:32 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:53:26 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
> > Precisely. And, it is my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), that
> > simply keeping your old kernel/initramfs around is NOT a guarantee (it
> > might work - and it might NOT) of being able to fallback to a known
> > working config until you figure it out.
> 
> Installing a new kernel does not magically make the old one break. If
> that kernel worked yesterday, it will work today.

Actually, that is not guaranteed.
I remember a situation in the past where boot-critical software required a 
certain minimal kernel-version with specific config-settings.
Without those I could not boot.

Inconsistencies can, and will, happen on occasion.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Sunday 29 September 2013 22:09:35 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 29/09/2013 19:59, Tanstaafl wrote:
> > I've been told that this shouldn't be a big deal... while I am a
> > (barely) passable linux sys admin
> 
> Allow me to forward an opinion. The above is not true, not even close.
> 
> Don't knock yourself, you don't deserve it :-)
> 
> In my day job I get to meet many people, and vast fleets of them are
> paid obscene amounts of money to do sysadmin work. I have an unprintable
> opinion of most of these folks (I'm tired of cleaning up after them and
> they mess they leave).

I can imagine some of those opinions, I am certain I have uttered the exact 
same words myself on occasion.

It gets worse when those are the ones holding the root-password and refuse to 
give it to you, even though it is obvious I know how to do things better then 
they do...

> You on the other hand would wipe the floor with easily 95% of those
> clowns. Seriously.
> 
> And that goes for just about everyone else on this list who has been
> around a while.

The list thanks you :)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:01:27 +0200, Hinnerk van Bruinehsen wrote:

> > mount /usr -o remount,ro
> > mkdir /newusr
> > rsync -a /usr/ /new/usr/
> > Comment out /usr line in /etc/fstab
> > mv /usr /oldusr
> > mv /newusr /usr
> > reboot
> > rmdir /oldusr
> >
> > What you do with the old partition is up to you. In this case the
> > discussion was about /usr on LVM, so you just delete it and allocate
> > the space elsewhere when needed.

> You can even leave out the step of creating a new directory and moving
> it later if you bind-mount you rootfs somewhere, e.g. /mnt/gentoo.

Good point.

> You may want to add some parameters to the call to rsync, though (e.g.
> those that preserve permissions, xattrs (especially for SELinux or
> XT-PaX) and owner/group (should be -pogX),

-a covers most if not all of those.

> possibly -x aswell (if you
> have other filesystems under /usr (e.g. a discrete FS for the portage
> tree).

Another good point, one of those things you think of immediately after
hitting Send :(


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Middle-age - because your age starts to show at your middle.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:16 +0200, Joost Roeleveld wrote:

> > Installing a new kernel does not magically make the old one break. If
> > that kernel worked yesterday, it will work today.  
> 
> Actually, that is not guaranteed.
> I remember a situation in the past where boot-critical software
> required a certain minimal kernel-version with specific config-settings.
> Without those I could not boot.

I don't see how that is an issue with correctly written ebuilds.

If you update the kernel, you are increasing the version number and your
old one will still work.

If you update the software, the ebuild should detect an unsuitable kernel
and either warn you or abort.

Either way, it is irrelevant whether you are using an initramfs or not.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."
 RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - section 3.9

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Daniel Campbell]

On 09/30/2013 04:31 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 30/09/2013 01:31, Daniel Campbell wrote:
> 
> 
>> Curious; how is merging two filesystems done? I don't have a separate
>> /usr and am completely unaffected by this change, but it's somewhat
>> interesting to me. /usr stores some pretty important data on it, and I
>> imagine you'd need to mount it somewhere else in order to move the
>> files from it to /'s /usr dir. Is a Live environment recommended
>> instead? How would you mitigate the leftover partition, assuming it's
>> not adjacent to /'s partition?
> 
> 
> Because /usr is continually in use, boot using a livecd of your choice.
> In that environment, use fdisk (or whichever *disk you like) to make any
> changes to partitions you know you will need.
> 
> Mount your gentoo / somewhere convenient
> Mount your gentoo /usr somewhere convenient
> 
> copy the latter over to the former
> edit fstab
> reboot
> 
> It really is just a case of moving a large number of files around, but
> because those very files are always in use you have to do it in livecd
> environment.
> 
> There's no exact checklist one can follow to guarantee a 100% result
> blindly. Instead, as this is Gentoo, we assume users built their system
> knowing what they were doing and can appropriately deal with their
> config themselves. RAID and LVM for example may need attention, but the
> user is usually equipped to deal with that and knows what t do.
> 
> 
>>
>> I don't run an initramfs, thankfully, but I keep a pretty simple
>> system in terms of filesystems: /, /boot, and /home.
>>
> 
My suspicions were mostly correct, then. If the merge is that simple, I
see no reason not to do it if one doesn't want to roll an initramfs.
However, I imagine moving partitions around in gparted or something
similar would be quite a wait if / and /usr weren't adjacent on the drive.

Thanks for the simple-but-thorough explanation. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 12:27, Daniel Campbell wrote:
> On 09/30/2013 04:31 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On 30/09/2013 01:31, Daniel Campbell wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Curious; how is merging two filesystems done? I don't have a separate
>>> /usr and am completely unaffected by this change, but it's somewhat
>>> interesting to me. /usr stores some pretty important data on it, and I
>>> imagine you'd need to mount it somewhere else in order to move the
>>> files from it to /'s /usr dir. Is a Live environment recommended
>>> instead? How would you mitigate the leftover partition, assuming it's
>>> not adjacent to /'s partition?
>>
>>
>> Because /usr is continually in use, boot using a livecd of your choice.
>> In that environment, use fdisk (or whichever *disk you like) to make any
>> changes to partitions you know you will need.
>>
>> Mount your gentoo / somewhere convenient
>> Mount your gentoo /usr somewhere convenient
>>
>> copy the latter over to the former
>> edit fstab
>> reboot
>>
>> It really is just a case of moving a large number of files around, but
>> because those very files are always in use you have to do it in livecd
>> environment.
>>
>> There's no exact checklist one can follow to guarantee a 100% result
>> blindly. Instead, as this is Gentoo, we assume users built their system
>> knowing what they were doing and can appropriately deal with their
>> config themselves. RAID and LVM for example may need attention, but the
>> user is usually equipped to deal with that and knows what t do.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I don't run an initramfs, thankfully, but I keep a pretty simple
>>> system in terms of filesystems: /, /boot, and /home.
>>>
>>
> My suspicions were mostly correct, then. If the merge is that simple, I
> see no reason not to do it if one doesn't want to roll an initramfs.
> However, I imagine moving partitions around in gparted or something
> similar would be quite a wait if / and /usr weren't adjacent on the drive.

Indeed, this is the part where it can get hairy, and it all totally
depends on how the user decided to lay out their partitions.

Eyeballs and brains form the solution here, not computers and scripts :-)


> 
> Thanks for the simple-but-thorough explanation. :)
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Monday 30 September 2013 10:01:32 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 30/09/2013 06:14, Walter Dnes wrote:
> >   If the udev people had made "net ifnames=0" the default, and allowed
> > 
> > the small percentage of multi-nic machine admins to set "net.ifnames=1",
> > this would not have been an issue.  Some corner case exotic setups
> > require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All the complaining
> > you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just fine with the
> > simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution rammed down their
> > throats.
> 
> No, that is just plain wrong.
> 
> Having interfaces on a multi-nic host come up as ethX where X is a
> mostly random number is just so broken it beggars belief. Trust me, it
> is zero fun when it happens and what makes it even worse if you have no
> warning at all beforehand.

I trust you, but on my multi-nic systems, I found a better solution :)
As I use Xen to virtualize my systems and as I don't want to have multiple 
network cables running side-by-side, I started using VLANs.

I know have all the NICs names eth1,eth2,...ethn.
I throw them all as a bonded network device: bond0 (the other ends go into a 
switch supporting bonding network ports)
then on top of that, I have VLANs with distinctive names (lan, dmz, guest, 
vm,...) and link these as required to different Xen-domains.

When the network names get renamed suddenly to the "non-predictive" scheme, my 
system refuses to boot.
Before that, I would use mac-addresses to link ethx devices to names that make 
sense to me. (see above for the names)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Monday 30 September 2013 11:24:58 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:16 +0200, Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> > > Installing a new kernel does not magically make the old one break. If
> > > that kernel worked yesterday, it will work today.
> > 
> > Actually, that is not guaranteed.
> > I remember a situation in the past where boot-critical software
> > required a certain minimal kernel-version with specific config-settings.
> > Without those I could not boot.
> 
> I don't see how that is an issue with correctly written ebuilds.
> 
> If you update the kernel, you are increasing the version number and your
> old one will still work.
> 
> If you update the software, the ebuild should detect an unsuitable kernel
> and either warn you or abort.

That is the problem though, the ebuild can't detect that there is an 
unsuitable kernel still available.

> Either way, it is irrelevant whether you are using an initramfs or not.

I agree, my comment was made to point out that a kernel that worked yesterday, 
may no longer work tomorrow.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 12:32, Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> On Monday 30 September 2013 10:01:32 Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On 30/09/2013 06:14, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>>   If the udev people had made "net ifnames=0" the default, and allowed
>>>
>>> the small percentage of multi-nic machine admins to set "net.ifnames=1",
>>> this would not have been an issue.  Some corner case exotic setups
>>> require complex solutions... no ifs/ands/ors/buts.  All the complaining
>>> you hear is from the other 99% who's setup worked just fine with the
>>> simple solution, suddenly finding the complex solution rammed down their
>>> throats.
>>
>> No, that is just plain wrong.
>>
>> Having interfaces on a multi-nic host come up as ethX where X is a
>> mostly random number is just so broken it beggars belief. Trust me, it
>> is zero fun when it happens and what makes it even worse if you have no
>> warning at all beforehand.
> 
> I trust you, but on my multi-nic systems, I found a better solution :)
> As I use Xen to virtualize my systems and as I don't want to have multiple 
> network cables running side-by-side, I started using VLANs.
> 
> I know have all the NICs names eth1,eth2,...ethn.
> I throw them all as a bonded network device: bond0 (the other ends go into a 
> switch supporting bonding network ports)
> then on top of that, I have VLANs with distinctive names (lan, dmz, guest, 
> vm,...) and link these as required to different Xen-domains.
> 
> When the network names get renamed suddenly to the "non-predictive" scheme, my 
> system refuses to boot.
> Before that, I would use mac-addresses to link ethx devices to names that make 
> sense to me. (see above for the names)


The worst case that comes to mind was a three zone netflow collector
plus the first nic on our management range.

If you're familiar with old netflow versions you'll know it is UDP from
the router and is touchy about addresses. So we had incoming netflow
from three ranges each hitting a dedicated nic and this all worked
marvellously for years and years.

One day after a routine maintenance window the box came up with all 4
nics scrambled and who knows what was now assigned to what. Forget ssh
to log in and fix it - nothing was listening. That took very senior
sysadmins on site to deal with, the regular maintenance guy was in way
over his head.

Business were OK with losing 15 minutes billing and stats data in a
maintenance window. They were definitely not OK with losing several
hours of it because someone thought assigning names on a
non-deterministic discovery order was a good idea.

One thing about Dell hardware - you always know exactly what each nic is
connected to on the motherboard so with that info the new names are
predictable (consistent is actually the better term). Using MAC
addresses for the same purposes is clunky and unwieldy, the MACs have to
be recorded somewhere and you still don't know which MAC goes with which
physical socket. With bus numbers you do know.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dan Johansson]

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On 29.09.2013 20:25, Dale wrote:
> Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-29 11:24 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Tanstaafl wrote:
>>>> Dale - I'm honestly curious, what is your reason, philisophical or
>>>> technical, for wanting a separate /usr?
>>>>
>>>> Everything I've read says there is no good reason for it today.
>>>> Separate /home, /tmp, /var, yes, good reasons for t hose... but not
>>>> /usr...
>>>>
>>>> So, again - why would you prefer switching distro's over merging /usr
>>>> back into / and be done with it?
>>
>>> The reason is the same I have posted before.  I have / and /boot on
>>> regular partitions.  Everything else is on LVM.  I don't have / on LVM
>>> because it would require a init thingy.  I don't have /boot on LVM
>>> because grub doesn't or didn't support it.  I have since switched to
>>> grub2 so it may but still have the issue with / so no need redoing
>>> everything for that.
>>
>> Well, I don't see a *reason* to WANT to have /usr on a separate
>> partition. I see only THE reason that you have it there NOW.
>>
>> Also, logically speaking, if the stated reason for not having / (or
>> /boot) on separate LVM partitions is because it would require an init
>> thingy, then why can't you simply add /usr to that reason?
>>
>> Again, I'm asking for why you WANT it on a separate LVM partition, not
>> why it is there now.
>>
>> The way I see it, if y ou cannot provide a rational answer to that
>> question, then  there is no reason for you to use this as a reason to
>> abandon gentoo, only a reason to merge /usr into /...
>>
>>
> 
> Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
> resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.  For
> me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.  I am the one
> doing things on my puter not you or anyone else.  If the init thingy
> fails, that will be me staring at a error message, not you. 

I agree to 100% with you Dale. I have /usr on a separate LVM partition
(I only have, as you, / and /boot on regular partitions) to be able to
easily extend it (which I have been forced to do a few times).
And as my VG-partition starts directly after the /-partition I am not in
the position to extend / to "engulf" all the data in /usr.

-- 
Dan Johansson, <http://www.dmj.nu>
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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 30.09.2013 01:27, schrieb Dale:
> Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-29 5:35 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Tanstaafl wrote:
>>>> Ok, but... everything I've read and personal experience over the years
>>>> shows that space required for /usr should not change much, especially
>>>> constantly grow over time (like requirements for /home can and will)-
>>>> it may fluctuate (increase, decrease) *a little* over time, but it
>>>> definitely should not grow substantially, so, if you had to resize it,
>>>> most likely it is because you simply didn't allocate enough room to
>>>> start with.
>>> So my experience doesn't matter any then?
>> Dale, that is NOT what I said, and nothing I am saying is intended to
>> be offensive.
>>
>>> My /usr does vary and sometimes varies quite a bit.
>> The question you should be asking yourself then, is WHY?
> To me, it doesn't matter why it varies, it just does.  After each
> update, I check to see what the partitions look like.  The biggest
> change was going from KDE3 to KDE4.  That seemed to make things grow a
> good bit.  Other things I install/uninstall seem to change things too.
>
>>> That is why I had to resize the thing. Saying that I didn't make it
>>> large enough to begin with isn't the point.
>> It is precisely the point...
>>
>> The fact is, there is nothing in there that *should* vary much (once
>> your system is fully installed) - unless you are using it in some
>> non-standard way, and/or not occasionally cleaning out /usr/src (as
>> Alan pointed out)... and if either of those is the case, then as I
>> said, it is your own fault that you needed to resize it.
>>
>> Don't you see how contradictory it is to say that you will change from
>> gentoo to distro-x because gentoo has made a change that requires you
>> to either merge /usr into / or use an 'init thingy', when distro-x,
>> that you say you will change to, USES AN INIT THINGY? Doesn't that
>> sound irrational to you?
> No, it doesn't.  On Gentoo, I HAVE to make the thing but don't know how
> to fix it if it breaks.  On other distros, I don't have to make the
> thing.  If it fails, at worst, I can reinstall in much less time than I
> would spend trying to fix the silly thing.  Since I don't know how to
> fix one and can't boot to get help, then the computer may as well be a
> screen door on a submarine.  As I posted before, if something breaks and
> I can't fix it, I replace it with something else that works.  That could
> be why /usr varies so much too. 
>
>> What would be logical and rational would be to either:
>>
>> a) learn how to use an init thingy (which from some more reading I've
>> been doing, doesn't look quite as bad as it seemed initially), or
>>
>> b) determine what is a sane size for /usr, make / an appropriate size
>> to subsume it, and merge it into /.
>>
>> Now, if you don't have enough room in / to merge it, then obviously it
>> will be more painful, but once it is done, you never have to worry
>> about it again - and no init thingy.
> Actually, history proves that wrong too.  I started using LVM because I
> got tired of having to rearrange my partitions and resize things.  That
> was the whole reason I switched to LVM when I did.  Ask anyone on this
> list that has been here long ehough.  I have had to move things around
> LOTS of times because things grow including /usr and /var.  /home is a
> different and unrelated thing.  Funny thing is, I did it several times
> and never even posted about it. 
>
>>> When people use LVM, the reason they use it is so that we can resize
>>> things when needed.
>> Yes, and I use LVM - but again, this is only important for dirs/mnt
>> points that have the potential to consume more and more disk space...
>> that potential is simply not there for (a properly configured and
>> maintained) /usr...
> See above. 
>
>>> And what is rational for you, is not rational to me.  Since you can
>>> dismiss mine, I can dismiss yours too.   Funny how that works huh?
>> Yep... and you can also dismiss my claim that jumping off that 1,000'
>> cliff won't result in you going splat, but it doesn't change the fact
>> that if you jump off of it, you WILL go splat. I just wouldn't get the
>> chance to say I told you so.
>>
>>
> And what you are saying is not changing anything either.  I don't want
> to mess with the init thingy.  If I do, first time it fails and a
> solution isn't obvious, time to move on to something else.  I like my 16
> year old washing machine and I have repaired things on it a few times. 
> If it breaks and I can't fix it, time for a new washing machine.  Most
> likely, a different brand and model too. 
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-) 
>

500gb harddisks are extremely cheap.
150gb for / with usr and you will be fine for ages.

Why are you acting like this is a problem?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 30.09.2013 11:00, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> On 30/09/2013 00:53, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> On 2013-09-29 5:15 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Those numbers are not likely to change much with time, with one
>>> exception:
>>>
>>> /usr/src
>>>
>>> That can get real big real quick if you don't clean up kernel sources
>>> often. Ideally, you'd make that a suitably sized LV and mount it
>>> seperately.
>> Yeah, I always keep 2 or 3 known good kernels, and clean out the old
>> stuff, so no worries there.
>>
>>> The other space consumer is /usr/share with it's many documentation
>>> files. But those too tend to be stable once you have everything
>>> installed. 5G free out of 19G is ~75% space in use which is perfectly
>>> acceptable for this case.
>>>
>>> Regular monitoring of the state of your machines will tell you if space
>>> usage increases so you can investigate and deal with it timeously.
>>>
>>> I assume you long since moved portage and it's storage directories out
>>> of /usr into /var?
>> Hmmm... No, I never did that myself...
>>
>> Wow...
>>
>> moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:19:01 : ~
>>  # du -sh /usr/*
>> 85M     /usr/bin
>> 131M    /usr/include
>> 0       /usr/lib
>> 11M     /usr/lib32
>> 530M    /usr/lib64
>> 51M     /usr/libexec
>> 15M     /usr/local
>> 7.8G    /usr/portage
>> 21M     /usr/sbin
>> 509M    /usr/share
>> 3.9G    /usr/src
>> 0       /usr/tmp
>> 7.0M    /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
>> moria : Sun Sep 29, 18:26:30 : ~
>>  #
> Apart from portage and src that all looks totally normal and unlikely to
> vary much over time.
>
>
>
>> Is this the official gentoo way now? Will a new/fresh virgin install
>> have /var/portage instead of /usr/portage?
> The new instaled default is to put all of portage on /var, whilst still
> supporting old installs on /usr. This is no big deal in code, as it's
> really just a string containing a base path
>
>
>> I can eliminate almost 8GB by moving portage and its storage directories...
> Or move them onto a dedictaed LV. This is a case where a different mount
> point makes a lot of sense - we're all aware just how unique the tree is
> in terms of fs performance - thousands of small files mostly smaller
> than 2k in hundreds of directories. It's quite different to everything
> else on /usr or even /var.
>
> Same with distfiles, that too can move anywhere you want it to be, just
> adjust one setting in make.conf
>
>> I don't recall seeing a news item about that...
> IIRC it wasn't a news item as such. Perhaps it was an elog from portage
> itself.
>
>
>> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I
>> don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults unless
>> there is a very good reason to do so.
> It's /var/portage for new installs. If you want it to be somewhere else,
> just move it and adjust make.conf
>
>
really? so when I moved PORTDIR to /var/portage I was ahead of the rest?
Wow...

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-30 1:10 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> 
wrote:
> 150gb for / with usr and you will be fine for ages.

I'm curious what a common/average size is for desktops...

My /usr, without portage files, is @ 5GB.

My current / is only 83M, so even after I merge /usr into it, it will 
still be only @ 5GB...

But, this is a server, so...

For an average desktop, loaded with software (say, KDE, Libreoffice, 
etc), how much will /usr grow to? Or more specifically, what is a 
*reasonable* maximum one could expect?

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 30.09.2013 19:25, schrieb Tanstaafl:
> On 2013-09-30 1:10 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann
> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> 150gb for / with usr and you will be fine for ages.
>
> I'm curious what a common/average size is for desktops...
>
> My /usr, without portage files, is @ 5GB.
>
> My current / is only 83M, so even after I merge /usr into it, it will
> still be only @ 5GB...
>
> But, this is a server, so...
>
> For an average desktop, loaded with software (say, KDE, Libreoffice,
> etc), how much will /usr grow to? Or more specifically, what is a
> *reasonable* maximum one could expect?
>
>

my whole / with KDE, libreoffice, ut2004 in /opt and /usr/src having
several linux versions in it but without PORTDIR is:
/dev/root        59G     33G   24G   58% /
10G are /opt
18G are /usr
5.4G are /usr/src

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 12:38 AM, Dan Johansson <Dan.Johansson@dmj.nu> wrote:
> On 29.09.2013 20:25, Dale wrote:
>> Simple, I have never had to resize / or /boot before.  I have had to
>> resize /usr, /var and /home several times tho.  THAT is the reason.  For
>> me, it doesn't matter if it is rational to YOU or not.  I am the one
>> doing things on my puter not you or anyone else.  If the init thingy
>> fails, that will be me staring at a error message, not you.
>
> I agree to 100% with you Dale. I have /usr on a separate LVM partition
> (I only have, as you, / and /boot on regular partitions) to be able to
> easily extend it (which I have been forced to do a few times).
> And as my VG-partition starts directly after the /-partition I am not in
> the position to extend / to "engulf" all the data in /usr.

Peeps using LVM:
If, right now, you were forced to boot into /, without /usr, would you
be able to manually assemble your usr using pv/vg/lv tools - without
the assistance of udev?

The gentoo warning is simply saying that they don't have enough people
to devote to debugging problems where that happens. So if you so love
your / rescue systems, you can make a very early init script - before udev -
that mounts /usr. And you could host it on an overlay if you want or
submit it into gentoo bugzilla as a proposal.

It isn't unsupported in that they're going to make sure it doesn't work.
It's unsupported in that they don't have the resources to fix bugs caused by
that.

-- 
This email is:    [ ] actionable   [x] fyi        [ ] social
Response needed:  [ ] yes          [x] up to you  [ ] no
Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [ ] soon       [x] none

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 19:25, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-30 1:10 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>> 150gb for / with usr and you will be fine for ages.
> 
> I'm curious what a common/average size is for desktops...
> 
> My /usr, without portage files, is @ 5GB.
> 
> My current / is only 83M, so even after I merge /usr into it, it will
> still be only @ 5GB...
> 
> But, this is a server, so...
> 
> For an average desktop, loaded with software (say, KDE, Libreoffice,
> etc), how much will /usr grow to? Or more specifically, what is a
> *reasonable* maximum one could expect?
> 


The big space hogs are:

/usr/lib*
/usr/share/

most of that comes from KDE and Gnome. Both systems are huge and bundle
lots of "accessory" files - best descriptive word I could find.

The main culprit by far is artwork - themes, wallpaper, sound themes,
icon collections and so on. Second is marble, celestia and similar geo*
type apps with their maps.

I'd say 20G total is a) lots more than you'd actually need even with
tons of unneeded artwork and b) a tiny fraction of the smallest
(spinning) disk you can buy these days.

So 20G is a good upper limit to start with. Marble and celestia users
can bump it up according to their needs - anyone who has detailed maps
of the entire Earth's land surface likely already knows how much disk
space it takes up :-)

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 30/09/2013 19:25, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I
>>> >> don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults unless
>>> >> there is a very good reason to do so.
>> > It's /var/portage for new installs. If you want it to be somewhere else,
>> > just move it and adjust make.conf
>> >
>> >
> really? so when I moved PORTDIR to /var/portage I was ahead of the rest?
> Wow...
> 


You were ahead of me for sure :-)

I clearly remember one day long long ago you ranted and raved about how
a huge chunk of /usr was write-often...

... so I fiddled with mine to make it work on /var too and was very
happy with it.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[pk]

On 2013-09-30 09:32, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> I never mentioned /var at all.
> 
> Go back and read again what I did write.

I'm quite aware what you wrote. If you only read what I wrote... English
is not my native language but the word *may* surely cannot be
misunderstood? Ok, I'll make it simple:

If *something1* at boot time requires access to *something2* at boot
time that isn't available then I would say that *something1* is broken
by design not the *something2*.

So I would argue that devs relying on /usr always being there have
broken the "system".

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dan Johansson]

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On 30.09.2013 20:09, Mark David Dumlao wrote:
> Peeps using LVM:
> If, right now, you were forced to boot into /, without /usr, would you
> be able to manually assemble your usr using pv/vg/lv tools - without
> the assistance of udev?

Sure can!!!



-- 
Dan Johansson, <http://www.dmj.nu>
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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 13:25:57 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:

> On 2013-09-30 1:10 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann
> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > 150gb for / with usr and you will be fine for ages.
> 
> I'm curious what a common/average size is for desktops...
> 
> My /usr, without portage files, is @ 5GB.
> 
> My current / is only 83M, so even after I merge /usr into it, it will 
> still be only @ 5GB...
> 
> But, this is a server, so...
> 
> For an average desktop, loaded with software (say, KDE, Libreoffice, 
> etc), how much will /usr grow to? Or more specifically, what is a 
> *reasonable* maximum one could expect?
> 
My desktop

% df /usr
Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
silastic/usr   zfs    32G   15G   17G  48% /usr

My laptop

% df /usr
Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
bangbang/usr   zfs    16G  9.1G  6.6G  59% /usr

Both with KDE and LO, but no portage. $PORTDIR is on /var,
$DISTDIR and $PKGDIR are on an NFS mount.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"There are some ideas so idiotic that only an intellectual could believe
them" George Orwell

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> 500gb harddisks are extremely cheap. 150gb for / with usr and you will
> be fine for ages. Why are you acting like this is a problem? 

Maybe cheap for you but not so for me.  I'm on a fixed income,
disabled.  Also, my brother has cancer and I'm taking him to treatments
that are about 75 miles away one way.  I'm buying gas since he can't
work much if any right now either.  Right now, buying anything computer
related is out of the question.  I got much more important things to
deal wtih.  I'm certainly not going to be able to do that in the next 30
days.  So, computer, Gentoo as well, is pretty low on the priority
list.  I suspect I will be bootable for a good while but have a plan B
if needed. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:38:36 +0200, Dan Johansson wrote:

> I agree to 100% with you Dale. I have /usr on a separate LVM partition
> (I only have, as you, / and /boot on regular partitions) to be able to
> easily extend it (which I have been forced to do a few times).
> And as my VG-partition starts directly after the /-partition I am not in
> the position to extend / to "engulf" all the data in /usr.

It's possible, even without an external drive, but a fair bit more work,
provided you have enough free space in your VG to be able to reduce it.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

GOTO: (n.) an efficient and general way of controlling a program, much
despised by academics and others whose brains have been ruined by
overexposure to Pascal.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 30.09.2013 22:48, schrieb Dale:
> Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>> 500gb harddisks are extremely cheap. 150gb for / with usr and you will
>> be fine for ages. Why are you acting like this is a problem? 
> Maybe cheap for you but not so for me.  I'm on a fixed income,
> disabled.  Also, my brother has cancer and I'm taking him to treatments
> that are about 75 miles away one way.  I'm buying gas since he can't
> work much if any right now either.  Right now, buying anything computer
> related is out of the question.  I got much more important things to
> deal wtih.  I'm certainly not going to be able to do that in the next 30
> days.  So, computer, Gentoo as well, is pretty low on the priority
> list.  I suspect I will be bootable for a good while but have a plan B
> if needed. 
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
you are talking to a person whose income is only slightly above social
security levels and I am still be able to buy an adequate hdd once in a
while.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Walter Dnes]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 09:40:45PM +0200, pk wrote

> If *something1* at boot time requires access to *something2* at boot
> time that isn't available then I would say that *something1* is broken
> by design not the *something2*.

  What about the case where *something2* *USED TO BE AVAILABLE, BUT HAS
BEEN MOVED TO /USR* ?

> So I would argue that devs relying on /usr always being there have
> broken the "system".

  So I would argue that unnecessarily moving stuff into /usr is
deliberate sabotage, designed to break *something1*.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Mick]

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On Monday 30 Sep 2013 20:14:44 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 30/09/2013 19:25, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> >>> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I
> >>> 
> >>> >> don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults
> >>> >> unless there is a very good reason to do so.
> >> > 
> >> > It's /var/portage for new installs. If you want it to be somewhere
> >> > else, just move it and adjust make.conf
> > 
> > really? so when I moved PORTDIR to /var/portage I was ahead of the rest?
> > Wow...
> 
> You were ahead of me for sure :-)
> 
> I clearly remember one day long long ago you ranted and raved about how
> a huge chunk of /usr was write-often...
> 
> ... so I fiddled with mine to make it work on /var too and was very
> happy with it.


There's no reason to move /usr/portage to /  It can stay in your LVM.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:05:39 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

> > If *something1* at boot time requires access to *something2* at boot
> > time that isn't available then I would say that *something1* is broken
> > by design not the *something2*.  
> 
>   What about the case where *something2* *USED TO BE AVAILABLE, BUT HAS
> BEEN MOVED TO /USR* ?

What about the case where something1 wasn't required at boot time but
changed circumstances mean it now is?
 
> > So I would argue that devs relying on /usr always being there have
> > broken the "system".  
> 
>   So I would argue that unnecessarily moving stuff into /usr is
> deliberate sabotage, designed to break *something1*.

Define unnecessarily in that context? You can't, not for all use cases.
There are many files that clearly need to be available early on, and many
more that clearly do not. Between them is a huge grey area, files that
some need and some don't, that may be needed now or at some indeterminate
point in the future. If you put everything that may conceivably be needed
at early boot into /, you shift a large chunk of /usr/*bin/ and /usr/lib*
into /, effectively negating the point of a small, lean /. That puts us
right back where we started, try to define a point of separation that
cannot be defined.

initramfs is the new /, for varying values of new since most distros have
been doing it that way for well over a decade.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"He's dead, Jim.  You get his phaser, I'll grab his wallet."

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 23:05:29 +0100, Mick wrote:

> > > really? so when I moved PORTDIR to /var/portage I was ahead of the
> > > rest? Wow...  
> > 
> > You were ahead of me for sure :-)
> > 
> > I clearly remember one day long long ago you ranted and raved about
> > how a huge chunk of /usr was write-often...
> > 
> > ... so I fiddled with mine to make it work on /var too and was very
> > happy with it.  
> 
> 
> There's no reason to move /usr/portage to /  It can stay in your LVM.

This isn't about moving it to /, it's about moving it to /var, which is a
far more logical location for the portage tree. /usr is for static system
files, /var is for variable data.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don't know and I don't care

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike)]

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El 30/09/13 00:47, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
> Am 29.09.2013 18:41, schrieb Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike):
>> El 29/09/13 18:03, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
>>> Am 29.09.2013 17:12, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
>>>> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>>>>> the root cause of the problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>>>>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>>>>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>>>>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>>>>> blame too.
>>>>>
>>>>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>>>>
>>>> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of
>>>> UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain
>>>> things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly,
>>>> the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly,
>>>> but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root
>>>> and usr.
>>>>
>>> in the very early days /usr did not exist in the first space and was
>>> only created because someone added a harddisk.
>>>
>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>> I'm going to show the lack of sense of this argument:
>> in the very early days linux did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone got a 386.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
> wrong analogy and it goes down from here. Really.
Ohh, but they are inspired on YOUR analogy, so guess how wrong yours was.
>> in the very early days GNU did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone jammed a printer.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> in the very early days Gentoo did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone added a processor.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> in the very early days hardening did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone added security.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> in the very early days Gnome did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone got a graphics card.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the pattern there.
>>
>> Ohh and BTW, /usr was not just added because someone added a harddrive,
>> in most cases it was used to allow machines contain a very small system
>> on / which was enough to just boot and mount a networked system (/usr)
>> containing most of the software. This allowed for cheaper deployment of
>> machines since the hard drive could be smaller as it wouldn't need to
>> have all the data locally. Yeah, if this sounds familiar is because this
>> was later moved to initramfs.
> no, network'ed file systems came a lot later.
> Initially /usr was added because one harddisk was full. Really, that is
> the whole reason for its (broken) existance.
Please provide some reference about "Initially /usr was added because
one harddisk was full." without it your statement is moot to me.

The setup of a separate /usr on a networked system was used in amongst
other places a few swedish universities.
>>>> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never
>>>> terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home
>>>> filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill
>>>> all availab;e space, and users collect *things*
>>> and a seperate /home does not create any problems.
>>> /var is much more prone to accidentally fill up then /usr ever was.
>> You are jst getting it wrong, /var was kept locally as the data there
>> was supposed to change from machine to machine.
> no, you just don't understand what I wrote.
> People told other people to keep /usr seperate so / may not fill up by
> accident.
>
> That advise always was murky at best. Outright stupid is a good
> description too.
>
> /usr is not prone to much changes. So if your / fits the contents of
> /usr just fine, there is pretty much no risk.
> /var on the other hand tends to explode - but a lot of people never got
> told to put /var on a seperate disk.
>
> If you ever realized that a tens of gigabyte logfile just made your box
> unbootable, you learnt a lot that day.
That's why you move /var/log, not /var
>>>> Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and
>>>> diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.
>>>>
>>>> By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to
>>>> not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three
>>>> filesystem layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be
>>>> like Topsy (she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as
>>>> "distributions" arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions
>>>> became a real concern to some and standardization offorts were
>>>> encouraged.
>>>>
>>>> The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem
>>>> Hierarch Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V
>>>> definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added
>>>> more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.
>>>>
>>>> THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding
>>>> all the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet
>>>> even then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things
>>>> started falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the
>>>> Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The
>>>> fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted
>>>> and certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.
>>> too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.
>> Too bad separate /usr is much older than initramfs.
> too bad that initramfs and initrd are pretty good solutions to the
> problem of hidden breakage caused by seperate /usr.
> If you are smart enough to setup an nfs server, I suppose you are smart
> enough to run dracut/genkernel&co.
If you are smart enough to run "dracut/genkernel&co" I suppose you are
smart enough to see the wrongness of your initial statement "too bad
POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS."
>>>> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army
>>>> marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke
>>>> off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain
>>>> flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>>>>
>>>> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of
>>>> the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME
>>>> camp.
>>>> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat"
>>>> Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler
>>>> explanation.
>>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
>> True, fingers here should be pointed into another direction like systemd.
> systemd is not the first package to break.
udev is a part of systemd
>>>> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required
>>>> for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
>>> what? that you need an initrd? That is so bad?
>> It may be, there is people which may not have enough free space ob /boot
>> for example.
> and now we are deeply into kidding territory. How small is that boot? 3mb?
Maybe, I know of Gentoo users running on really old Pentium IIs with
SCSI disks, so it wouldn't come as a surprise.
>>> Are you kidding me?
>> I doubt it, instead you seem to be just trolling, see your own arguments
> well, I haven't seen any arguments from you so far. So who is the troll
> again?
You have kindly disregarded them... like trolls tend to do,
>>>> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and
>>>> Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>>>>
>>> no thank you. But if I might add one: you are making an elephant out of
>>> a gnat.
>> To me it looks like youu are making a gnat out of an elephant.
> what is the elephant? Running an extra command on kernel updates?
Requiring users to repartition systems with the downtime that carries,
for example.


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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 30.09.2013 22:48, schrieb Dale:
>> Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>> 500gb harddisks are extremely cheap. 150gb for / with usr and you will
>>> be fine for ages. Why are you acting like this is a problem? 
>> Maybe cheap for you but not so for me.  I'm on a fixed income,
>> disabled.  Also, my brother has cancer and I'm taking him to treatments
>> that are about 75 miles away one way.  I'm buying gas since he can't
>> work much if any right now either.  Right now, buying anything computer
>> related is out of the question.  I got much more important things to
>> deal wtih.  I'm certainly not going to be able to do that in the next 30
>> days.  So, computer, Gentoo as well, is pretty low on the priority
>> list.  I suspect I will be bootable for a good while but have a plan B
>> if needed. 
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
>>
> you are talking to a person whose income is only slightly above social
> security levels and I am still be able to buy an adequate hdd once in a
> while.
>
>

As I said, I got other more important things to deal with right now.  My
money is going to that not hard drives.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Bruce Hill]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 09:47:46PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> My desktop
> 
> % df /usr
> Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> silastic/usr   zfs    32G   15G   17G  48% /usr
> 
> My laptop
> 
> % df /usr
> Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> bangbang/usr   zfs    16G  9.1G  6.6G  59% /usr
> 
> Both with KDE and LO, but no portage. $PORTDIR is on /var,
> $DISTDIR and $PKGDIR are on an NFS mount.

Do you have some alias causing df output to use -h or how does that work?
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 7:21 AM, Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera
(klondike) <klondike@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Ohh and BTW, /usr was not just added because someone added a harddrive,
>>> in most cases it was used to allow machines contain a very small system
>>> on / which was enough to just boot and mount a networked system (/usr)
>>> containing most of the software. This allowed for cheaper deployment of
>>> machines since the hard drive could be smaller as it wouldn't need to
>>> have all the data locally. Yeah, if this sounds familiar is because this
>>> was later moved to initramfs.
>> no, network'ed file systems came a lot later.
>> Initially /usr was added because one harddisk was full. Really, that is
>> the whole reason for its (broken) existance.
> Please provide some reference about "Initially /usr was added because
> one harddisk was full." without it your statement is moot to me.
>

http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Mark David Dumlao <madumlao@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 7:21 AM, Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera
> (klondike) <klondike@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>> Ohh and BTW, /usr was not just added because someone added a harddrive,
>>>> in most cases it was used to allow machines contain a very small system
>>>> on / which was enough to just boot and mount a networked system (/usr)
>>>> containing most of the software. This allowed for cheaper deployment of
>>>> machines since the hard drive could be smaller as it wouldn't need to
>>>> have all the data locally. Yeah, if this sounds familiar is because this
>>>> was later moved to initramfs.
>>> no, network'ed file systems came a lot later.
>>> Initially /usr was added because one harddisk was full. Really, that is
>>> the whole reason for its (broken) existance.
>> Please provide some reference about "Initially /usr was added because
>> one harddisk was full." without it your statement is moot to me.
>>
>
> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html

Bell Labs notes on Unix. Search for "usr" and you'll notice it was originally
for home directories.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/notes.html

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 22:36:34 -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:

> Do you have some alias causing df output to use -h or how does that
> work?

% alias df
df='df --human-readable --no-sync --print-type'

Or, to put it another way - Yes.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

X-Modem- A device on the losing end of an encounter with lightning.

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PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-09-30 3:14 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/09/2013 19:25, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
 >> Alan wrote:
 >>> Charles wrote:
>>>> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I
>>>> don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults unless
>>>> there is a very good reason to do so.

>>> It's /var/portage for new installs. If you want it to be somewhere else,
>>> just move it and adjust make.conf

>> really? so when I moved PORTDIR to /var/portage I was ahead of the rest?
>> Wow...

> You were ahead of me for sure :-)

So... if the change from /usr/portage to /var/portage was official, is 
there any (official) documentation on precisely how to move it?

Hmmm.... more importantly, when did this change occur? Is it possibly 
tied to portage 2.2? The reason I ask is, I'm still on 2.1, and man 
portage still has references to:

/usr/portage/sets
/usr/portage/metadata
/usr/portage/profiles
/usr/share/portage/config

and man make.conf still says:

PKGDIR = [path] <snip>
               Defaults to /usr/portage/packages.

and most importantly:

PORTDIR = [path] <snip>
               Defaults to /usr/portage.

So... are you quite certain that this default has in fact changed?

I know that it is probably trivial, but I like to read official docs for 
things like this...

Thanks again...

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 01/10/2013 14:35, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-09-30 3:14 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 30/09/2013 19:25, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>> Alan wrote:
>>>> Charles wrote:
>>>>> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so, then I
>>>>> don't think I want to move it - I generally never change defaults
>>>>> unless
>>>>> there is a very good reason to do so.
> 
>>>> It's /var/portage for new installs. If you want it to be somewhere
>>>> else,
>>>> just move it and adjust make.conf
> 
>>> really? so when I moved PORTDIR to /var/portage I was ahead of the rest?
>>> Wow...
> 
>> You were ahead of me for sure :-)
> 
> So... if the change from /usr/portage to /var/portage was official, is
> there any (official) documentation on precisely how to move it?
> 
> Hmmm.... more importantly, when did this change occur? Is it possibly
> tied to portage 2.2? The reason I ask is, I'm still on 2.1, and man
> portage still has references to:
> 
> /usr/portage/sets
> /usr/portage/metadata
> /usr/portage/profiles
> /usr/share/portage/config
> 
> and man make.conf still says:
> 
> PKGDIR = [path] <snip>
>               Defaults to /usr/portage/packages.
> 
> and most importantly:
> 
> PORTDIR = [path] <snip>
>               Defaults to /usr/portage.
> 
> So... are you quite certain that this default has in fact changed?

Yes. The docs are out of date.

> I know that it is probably trivial, but I like to read official docs for
> things like this...


It is trivial. All that it is, is a path to where some stuff is. That's
all, nothing more.

Change this in make.conf:

PORTDIR="/var/portage"
DISTDIR="/var/distfiles"
PKGDIR="/var/packages"

move the directories to the new location and run any old emerge command
of your choice. If you left something out, you'll get a message on the
screen.


You can have these directories any place you want and nothing breaks by
moving them around. The only change is the shipped default. So there are
loads of this you could worry about in IT, this ain't one of 'em





-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dragostin Yanev]

On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 08:35:16 -0400
Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:

> On 2013-09-30 3:14 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 30/09/2013 19:25, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>  >> Alan wrote:
>  >>> Charles wrote:
> >>>> But... is /usr/portage the default/recommended location? If so,
> >>>> then I don't think I want to move it - I generally never change
> >>>> defaults unless there is a very good reason to do so.
> 
> >>> It's /var/portage for new installs. If you want it to be
> >>> somewhere else, just move it and adjust make.conf
> 
> >> really? so when I moved PORTDIR to /var/portage I was ahead of the
> >> rest? Wow...
> 
> > You were ahead of me for sure :-)
> 
> So... if the change from /usr/portage to /var/portage was official,
> is there any (official) documentation on precisely how to move it?
> 
> Hmmm.... more importantly, when did this change occur? Is it possibly 
> tied to portage 2.2? The reason I ask is, I'm still on 2.1, and man 
> portage still has references to:
> 
> /usr/portage/sets
> /usr/portage/metadata
> /usr/portage/profiles
> /usr/share/portage/config
> 
> and man make.conf still says:
> 
> PKGDIR = [path] <snip>
>                Defaults to /usr/portage/packages.
> 
> and most importantly:
> 
> PORTDIR = [path] <snip>
>                Defaults to /usr/portage.
> 
> So... are you quite certain that this default has in fact changed?
> 
> I know that it is probably trivial, but I like to read official docs
> for things like this...
> 
> Thanks again...
> 

Hi,
I haven't kept up with documentation but moving portage is
fairly straightforward.
Here's how I'd do it:

 mkdir /var/portage
 chown portage:portage /var/portage
 rsync -aHx /usr/portage/ /var/portage/ #add flags if using ext attr.

edit /etc/make.conf 
 PORTDIR="/var/portage"
 DISTDIR=${PORTDIR}/distfiles
 PKGDIR=${PORTDIR}/packages

edit /etc/portage/repos.conf/* accordingly

change default profile with eselect profile list
or manually link /etc/make.profile to the correct path

emerge --sync

when everything is working ok clean /usr/portage

Hope i was helpful,
netixen

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-01 8:46 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I know that it is probably trivial, but I like to read official docs for
>> things like this...

> It is trivial. All that it is, is a path to where some stuff is. That's
> all, nothing more.

Ok, thanks... but (call me anal, because I am) I still think this 
deserves at least a tiny mention in the formal documentation somewhere, 
even if its just on a a wiki page or whatever.

Also, obviously the man docs for portage and make.conf should be updated...

> Change this in make.conf:
>
> PORTDIR="/var/portage"
> DISTDIR="/var/distfiles"
> PKGDIR="/var/packages"

Hmmm...

Currently, everything is in /usr/portage:

/usr/portage
/usr/portage/distfiles
/usr/portage/packages

But the new defaults are 3 separate directories as you specified above?

Or was that a typo, and they should be:

/var/portage
/var/portage/distfiles
/var/portage/packages

?

Another question...

Since these are the new defaults, how do new installs define them? Are 
they explicitly set in make.conf now? Or is it somewhere else more 
low-level - and if so, wouldn't it be better to change it there once 
I've moved everything and confirmed it is working properly?

> move the directories to the new location

Is a cp -rp /usr/portage /var/portage (repeat for the others) sufficient?

> and run any old emerge command of your choice. If you left something
> out, you'll get a message on the screen.
>
> You can have these directories any place you want and nothing breaks by
> moving them around. The only change is the shipped default. So there are
> loads of this you could worry about in IT, this ain't one of 'em

Heh... ok, thanks, but you see, I worry about *everything* (maybe that 
is one reason I rarely get bit badly doing things like this).

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 01/10/2013 15:52, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-10-01 8:46 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I know that it is probably trivial, but I like to read official docs for
>>> things like this...
> 
>> It is trivial. All that it is, is a path to where some stuff is. That's
>> all, nothing more.
> 
> Ok, thanks... but (call me anal, because I am) I still think this
> deserves at least a tiny mention in the formal documentation somewhere,
> even if its just on a a wiki page or whatever.
> 
> Also, obviously the man docs for portage and make.conf should be updated...


Err, yeah, that should have been done.

But none of that fazes me anymore. You should see some of the docs I'm
forced to use for "professional" "carrier grade" "premium level support"
products....

> 
>> Change this in make.conf:
>>
>> PORTDIR="/var/portage"
>> DISTDIR="/var/distfiles"
>> PKGDIR="/var/packages"
> 
> Hmmm...
> 
> Currently, everything is in /usr/portage:
> 
> /usr/portage
> /usr/portage/distfiles
> /usr/portage/packages
> 
> But the new defaults are 3 separate directories as you specified above?
> 
> Or was that a typo, and they should be:
> 
> /var/portage
> /var/portage/distfiles
> /var/portage/packages

No, I have them the way I posted.

For years portage shipped with this really dumbass stupid notion of
shoving local overlays, binpkgs and distfiles all in with the tree.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. It makes using rsync needlessly difficult and you
can't deal with the tree as a single directory unit without putting an
exclusion in.

So I split them up and rigged things so each category of thing is in
it's own distinct directory tree. Like I said earlier, they are just
paths and you can put them anywhere you like. You too can put yours
anywhere it makes sense to you.

> 
> ?
> 
> Another question...
> 
> Since these are the new defaults, how do new installs define them? Are
> they explicitly set in make.conf now? Or is it somewhere else more
> low-level - and if so, wouldn't it be better to change it there once
> I've moved everything and confirmed it is working properly?

The default is in the portage code somewhere. I don't care where.

What I do know is how to make mine something different, and that's what
I did.

Look, this is not hard. It's like having a photo app default to storing
your photos in "~/.local/share/my-app/DCIM/data/local/photos/public/"
and you take one look at this and decide that's for the birds. So you
click View->Settings and see "Photo Library location", make it
"~/photos" and promptly forget that the stupid default ever existed.

This is exactly like that.


> 
>> move the directories to the new location
> 
> Is a cp -rp /usr/portage /var/portage (repeat for the others) sufficient?
> 
>> and run any old emerge command of your choice. If you left something
>> out, you'll get a message on the screen.
>>
>> You can have these directories any place you want and nothing breaks by
>> moving them around. The only change is the shipped default. So there are
>> loads of this you could worry about in IT, this ain't one of 'em
> 
> Heh... ok, thanks, but you see, I worry about *everything* (maybe that
> is one reason I rarely get bit badly doing things like this).
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 10/01/2013 08:35 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> 
> So... if the change from /usr/portage to /var/portage was official, is 
> there any (official) documentation on precisely how to move it?
> 
> Hmmm.... more importantly, when did this change occur? Is it possibly 
> tied to portage 2.2? The reason I ask is, I'm still on 2.1, and man 
> portage still has references to:
> 

Everyone agrees it should go under /var somewhere, and that the
distfiles shouldn't be in the tree,

  http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org/msg54610.html

but no one location was chosen IIRC.

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 09:52:47 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:

> On 2013-10-01 8:46 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I know that it is probably trivial, but I like to read official docs
> >> for things like this...
> 
> > It is trivial. All that it is, is a path to where some stuff is.
> > That's all, nothing more.
> 
> Ok, thanks... but (call me anal, because I am) I still think this 
> deserves at least a tiny mention in the formal documentation somewhere, 
> even if its just on a a wiki page or whatever.
> 
> Also, obviously the man docs for portage and make.conf should be
> updated...

man make.conf

PORTDIR = [path]
 Defines the location of the Portage tree. This is the repository for all
 profile information as well as all ebuilds. If you change this, you must
 update your /etc/portage/make.profile symlink accordingly.

That's it. he portage tree is just a directory full of files, all you
need to tell portage is where to find it.

mv /usr/portage /var/
Change PORTDIR in make.conf
eselect profile list and set

> > You can have these directories any place you want and nothing breaks
> > by moving them around. The only change is the shipped default. So
> > there are loads of this you could worry about in IT, this ain't one
> > of 'em
 
> Heh... ok, thanks, but you see, I worry about *everything* (maybe that 
> is one reason I rarely get bit badly doing things like this).
 
What's the worst that can happen? Portage stops working until you move it
back or correct PORTDIR. That's not system-critical, you can't break your
system by moving a bunch of bash scripts that are never used unless you
explicitly tell portage to do so.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

c:>Press Enter to Exit

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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:11:56 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> So I split them up and rigged things so each category of thing is in
> it's own distinct directory tree. Like I said earlier, they are just
> paths and you can put them anywhere you like. You too can put yours
> anywhere it makes sense to you.

And if you have more that one Gentoo box on the network, it makes sense
to have DISTDIR and a NFS share for all of them, so save downloading the
same files multiple times.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
plants and animals.  When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals.  But then again,
don't we all?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 01.10.2013 01:21, schrieb Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike):
> El 30/09/13 00:47, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
>> Am 29.09.2013 18:41, schrieb Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike):
>>> El 29/09/13 18:03, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
>>>> Am 29.09.2013 17:12, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
>>>>> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>>>>>> the root cause of the problem.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>>>>>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>>>>>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>>>>>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>>>>>> blame too.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>>>>>
>>>>> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of
>>>>> UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain
>>>>> things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly,
>>>>> the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly,
>>>>> but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root
>>>>> and usr.
>>>>>
>>>> in the very early days /usr did not exist in the first space and was
>>>> only created because someone added a harddisk.
>>>>
>>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>> I'm going to show the lack of sense of this argument:
>>> in the very early days linux did not exist in the first space and was
>>> only created because someone got a 386.
>>>
>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>> wrong analogy and it goes down from here. Really.
> Ohh, but they are inspired on YOUR analogy, so guess how wrong yours was.

your trolling is weak. And since I never saw anything worth reading
posted by you, you are very close to plonk territory right now.

>>> in the very early days GNU did not exist in the first space and was
>>> only created because someone jammed a printer.
>>>
>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>>
>>> in the very early days Gentoo did not exist in the first space and was
>>> only created because someone added a processor.
>>>
>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>>
>>> in the very early days hardening did not exist in the first space and was
>>> only created because someone added security.
>>>
>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>>
>>> in the very early days Gnome did not exist in the first space and was
>>> only created because someone got a graphics card.
>>>
>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>>
>>> I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the pattern there.
>>>
>>> Ohh and BTW, /usr was not just added because someone added a harddrive,
>>> in most cases it was used to allow machines contain a very small system
>>> on / which was enough to just boot and mount a networked system (/usr)
>>> containing most of the software. This allowed for cheaper deployment of
>>> machines since the hard drive could be smaller as it wouldn't need to
>>> have all the data locally. Yeah, if this sounds familiar is because this
>>> was later moved to initramfs.
>> no, network'ed file systems came a lot later.
>> Initially /usr was added because one harddisk was full. Really, that is
>> the whole reason for its (broken) existance.
> Please provide some reference about "Initially /usr was added because
> one harddisk was full." without it your statement is moot to me.

see Mark David Dumlao's mails.

But it is interesting, that you are attacking others with your superior
knowledge - and then show that you lack exactly that. You are talking
about stuff you have no clue at all about.

>
> The setup of a separate /usr on a networked system was used in amongst
> other places a few swedish universities.

seperate /usr on network has been used in a lot of places. So what? Does
that prove anything?
Nope, it doesn't.

>>>>> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never
>>>>> terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home
>>>>> filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill
>>>>> all availab;e space, and users collect *things*
>>>> and a seperate /home does not create any problems.
>>>> /var is much more prone to accidentally fill up then /usr ever was.
>>> You are jst getting it wrong, /var was kept locally as the data there
>>> was supposed to change from machine to machine.
>> no, you just don't understand what I wrote.
>> People told other people to keep /usr seperate so / may not fill up by
>> accident.
>>
>> That advise always was murky at best. Outright stupid is a good
>> description too.
>>
>> /usr is not prone to much changes. So if your / fits the contents of
>> /usr just fine, there is pretty much no risk.
>> /var on the other hand tends to explode - but a lot of people never got
>> told to put /var on a seperate disk.
>>
>> If you ever realized that a tens of gigabyte logfile just made your box
>> unbootable, you learnt a lot that day.
> That's why you move /var/log, not /var

then /var/portage
/var/package
/var/tmp
/var/spool
or
/var/lib

explodes in size and takes out your box.

Seriously, /var is a good candidate for a seperate partition. /usr is not.

>>>>> Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and
>>>>> diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to
>>>>> not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three
>>>>> filesystem layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be
>>>>> like Topsy (she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as
>>>>> "distributions" arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions
>>>>> became a real concern to some and standardization offorts were
>>>>> encouraged.
>>>>>
>>>>> The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem
>>>>> Hierarch Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V
>>>>> definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added
>>>>> more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.
>>>>>
>>>>> THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding
>>>>> all the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet
>>>>> even then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things
>>>>> started falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the
>>>>> Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The
>>>>> fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted
>>>>> and certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.
>>>> too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.
>>> Too bad separate /usr is much older than initramfs.
>> too bad that initramfs and initrd are pretty good solutions to the
>> problem of hidden breakage caused by seperate /usr.
>> If you are smart enough to setup an nfs server, I suppose you are smart
>> enough to run dracut/genkernel&co.
> If you are smart enough to run "dracut/genkernel&co" I suppose you are
> smart enough to see the wrongness of your initial statement "too bad
> POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS."

too bad I am right and you are and idiot.

Originally, the name "POSIX" referred to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, released
in 1988. The family of POSIX standards is formally designated as IEEE
1003 and the international standard name is ISO/IEC 9945.
The standards, formerly known as IEEE-IX, emerged from a project that
began circa 1985. Richard Stallman suggested the name POSIX to the IEEE.
The committee found it more easily pronounceable and memorable, so it
adopted it

That is from wikipedia.

1985/1988. When were LSB/FHS created again?

FHS in 1994. Hm....


>>>>> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army
>>>>> marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke
>>>>> off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain
>>>>> flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of
>>>>> the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME
>>>>> camp.
>>>>> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat"
>>>>> Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler
>>>>> explanation.
>>>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>>>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>>>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
>>> True, fingers here should be pointed into another direction like systemd.
>> systemd is not the first package to break.
> udev is a part of systemd

so what?

>>>>> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required
>>>>> for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
>>>> what? that you need an initrd? That is so bad?
>>> It may be, there is people which may not have enough free space ob /boot
>>> for example.
>> and now we are deeply into kidding territory. How small is that boot? 3mb?
> Maybe, I know of Gentoo users running on really old Pentium IIs with
> SCSI disks, so it wouldn't come as a surprise.

I have really old scsi disks. 15k rpm U160/U320 ones. 37GB each. Way
then more enough room to store / with /usr in it. / in my system is a 64
gb disk.

Even P2 can stomach 80/120gb harddisks. You know the crap you get almost
for free on ebay.

And if you have a really small harddisk, seperating /boot is just stupid
anyway. So you have all of / to store your vmlinuz file and the
init'thingie'.

>>>> Are you kidding me?
>>> I doubt it, instead you seem to be just trolling, see your own arguments
>> well, I haven't seen any arguments from you so far. So who is the troll
>> again?
> You have kindly disregarded them... like trolls tend to do,

hm, lets see - I have facts on my side and you are insulting me. Who is
the troll again?

>>>>> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and
>>>>> Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>>>>>
>>>> no thank you. But if I might add one: you are making an elephant out of
>>>> a gnat.
>>> To me it looks like youu are making a gnat out of an elephant.
>> what is the elephant? Running an extra command on kernel updates?
> Requiring users to repartition systems with the downtime that carries,
> for example.
You don't need to repartition your system AT ALL. All you have to do is
to create an init 'thingie'. Genkernel can do that for you. You are done.

Seriously, you just convinced me. You ARE a mouth breather.

And I am not answering to your crap anymore. It my be contagious.

*plonk*

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-01 10:14 AM, Michael Orlitzky <michael@orlitzky.com> wrote:
> On 10/01/2013 08:35 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>
>> So... if the change from /usr/portage to /var/portage was official, is
>> there any (official) documentation on precisely how to move it?
>>
>> Hmmm.... more importantly, when did this change occur? Is it possibly
>> tied to portage 2.2? The reason I ask is, I'm still on 2.1, and man
>> portage still has references to:

> Everyone agrees it should go under /var somewhere, and that the
> distfiles shouldn't be in the tree,
>
>    http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org/msg54610.html
>
> but no one location was chosen IIRC.

?

I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch 
installation.

Someone had to decide the defaults - so, what are they? Anyone?

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:15:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:

> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch 
> installation.

Why? If ever there was a distro for people that didn't want to use
defaults, Gentoo is it.

> Someone had to decide the defaults - so, what are they? Anyone?

I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers to /usr/portage.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Is it possible to be totally partial?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 2:31 PM, pk <peterk2@coolmail.se> wrote:
> On 2013-09-30 00:04, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
>> It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some
>> random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to
>> work out fine that is broken.
>>
>> It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use
>> the code in /usr at that point in the sequence. More and more we are
>> seeing that this is no longer the case.
>
> So basically it wasn't broke before stuff started to use the code in
> /usr. How isn't that breaking?
>
>> So no-one broke it with a specific commit. It has always been broken by
>> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
>> fluke. IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.
>
> If what you are saying is true then *everything* is broken "by design"
> if something isn't available at boot time (may be /usr, may be /var or
> whatever).

Let me make an analogy between programs and recipes.

You see, a program is a lot like a recipe. It's a set of instructions
for a computer to follow. And if you have a recipe where if you follow
it, and anyone that eats the food says it tastes good, then you have a
good recipe.

Let me make an analogy between a restaurant franchise and a
distribution. You see, a franchise is a set of instructions for a
restaurateur to follow. A lot of those instructions are recipes. They
tell the restaurateur how to cook foods. But not all of those
instructions are. Some of them are instructions on the ideal
conditions to cook. Or some of them are instructions on how to get
materials, or how to talk to customers, or how to keep employees
happy. Now if you follow those instructions, and have the right
resources, you get to create a restaurant. In the same way, a
distribution can be thought of as a set of instructions. If you follow
those instructions, and have the right resources, you get to install a
lot of programs on a computer.

If everybody that follows the instructions on a recipe creates a food
that a lot of people think tastes great, then you have a great recipe.
And if everybody that follows the instuctions on a franchise creates a
restaurant that a lot of customers buy from and think the food is
great, then you have a great franchise.

Now let's say you have a franchise with very specific instructions to
buy ingredients from the nearest organic store. Now for many
restaurants that follow these instructions, they end up with great
food that makes an okay amount of money. But in some cities the
organic store doesn't have very good lettuce. Or the carrots are too
expensive. Or there isn't any organic store at all, so the restaurant
owner has to go to the next city and waste a lot of time and money to
get eggs. So those restaurants fail. But for many restaurants the
instructions work.

Now the restaurant owners get together and complain that their
restaurant isn't working. Why? they ask. It's because the head
franchise added pizza to the menu! The menu was working fine without
the pizza, but when they added pizza it became to expensive or
impractical to turn a profit. They might say that the franchise was
broken by the pizza. But many restaurant owners do fine by pizza. In
fact for many of them it's their hottest and most profitable product.

You see, the problem isn't the inclusion of a specific recipe. The
addition of pizza didn't break the restaurant. Nor did the addition of
burgers, or coke, or fries or whatever. The problem was with
instructions on how to manage the recipe ingredients. In short, while
they were practical for a lot of restaurant owners, they weren't
practical _in general_. The instructions could be better improved by
saying something like "buy ingredients from stores that give you this
much return," or "buy ingredients from our approved suppliers since
they give the best return on your money". If those instructions were
given instead of just vaguely saying to purchase from an organic
store, they'd have better control over the quality and profitability
of the restaurants.

And this is something like what is wrong with /usr. The individual
programs may be good. Many parts of the system taken together may be
good. But the instructions on how to manage programs going to /usr or
to / is too vague. There is no definitive quality control behind it.
Even if you follow the instructions, as best as you can, you will end
up making stupid decisions for the distribution.

Likewise with the franchise restaurants. The individual foods may be
good. Many of the instructions on managing people, foods, customers,
may be good.  But the whole concept of "purchase from some a supplier
with undefined levels of cost and quality" is NOT a good instruction.
Maybe that works for a lot of restaurants, but as a general rule it
doesn't work for all of them. If you follow it to the letter, you will
end up making stupid decisions for the restaurant.

And here's your problem. The franchise instructions aren't supposed to
just "work for a lot of restaurants". They're supposed to work for all
of them. Likewise with the distribution. the distribution packages,
rules, settings, etc, aren't supposed to be tailored for your own
personal setup. They're supposed to work for anybody for whom the
distribution is a target.

You might want to say that maybe udev, or maybe this driver, or maybe
this service, or that hardware breaks FHS and therefore Gentoo. But
that's the wrong way of looking at it. when the important parts of
something being boot critical depends on the system.
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:22 AM, Mark David Dumlao <madumlao@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 2:31 PM, pk <peterk2@coolmail.se> wrote:
>> On 2013-09-30 00:04, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>
>>> It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some
>>> random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to
>>> work out fine that is broken.
>>>
>>> It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use
>>> the code in /usr at that point in the sequence. More and more we are
>>> seeing that this is no longer the case.
>>
>> So basically it wasn't broke before stuff started to use the code in
>> /usr. How isn't that breaking?
>>
>>> So no-one broke it with a specific commit. It has always been broken by
>>> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
>>> fluke. IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.
>>
>> If what you are saying is true then *everything* is broken "by design"
>> if something isn't available at boot time (may be /usr, may be /var or
>> whatever).
>
> Let me make an analogy between programs and recipes.
>
> You see, a program is a lot like a recipe. It's a set of instructions
> for a computer to follow. And if you have a recipe where if you follow
> it, and anyone that eats the food says it tastes good, then you have a
> good recipe.
>
> Let me make an analogy between a restaurant franchise and a
> distribution. You see, a franchise is a set of instructions for a
> restaurateur to follow. A lot of those instructions are recipes. They
> tell the restaurateur how to cook foods. But not all of those
> instructions are. Some of them are instructions on the ideal
> conditions to cook. Or some of them are instructions on how to get
> materials, or how to talk to customers, or how to keep employees
> happy. Now if you follow those instructions, and have the right
> resources, you get to create a restaurant. In the same way, a
> distribution can be thought of as a set of instructions. If you follow
> those instructions, and have the right resources, you get to install a
> lot of programs on a computer.
>
> If everybody that follows the instructions on a recipe creates a food
> that a lot of people think tastes great, then you have a great recipe.
> And if everybody that follows the instuctions on a franchise creates a
> restaurant that a lot of customers buy from and think the food is
> great, then you have a great franchise.
>
> Now let's say you have a franchise with very specific instructions to
> buy ingredients from the nearest organic store. Now for many
> restaurants that follow these instructions, they end up with great
> food that makes an okay amount of money. But in some cities the
> organic store doesn't have very good lettuce. Or the carrots are too
> expensive. Or there isn't any organic store at all, so the restaurant
> owner has to go to the next city and waste a lot of time and money to
> get eggs. So those restaurants fail. But for many restaurants the
> instructions work.
>
> Now the restaurant owners get together and complain that their
> restaurant isn't working. Why? they ask. It's because the head
> franchise added pizza to the menu! The menu was working fine without
> the pizza, but when they added pizza it became to expensive or
> impractical to turn a profit. They might say that the franchise was
> broken by the pizza. But many restaurant owners do fine by pizza. In
> fact for many of them it's their hottest and most profitable product.
>
> You see, the problem isn't the inclusion of a specific recipe. The
> addition of pizza didn't break the restaurant. Nor did the addition of
> burgers, or coke, or fries or whatever. The problem was with
> instructions on how to manage the recipe ingredients. In short, while
> they were practical for a lot of restaurant owners, they weren't
> practical _in general_. The instructions could be better improved by
> saying something like "buy ingredients from stores that give you this
> much return," or "buy ingredients from our approved suppliers since
> they give the best return on your money". If those instructions were
> given instead of just vaguely saying to purchase from an organic
> store, they'd have better control over the quality and profitability
> of the restaurants.
>
> And this is something like what is wrong with /usr. The individual
> programs may be good. Many parts of the system taken together may be
> good. But the instructions on how to manage programs going to /usr or
> to / is too vague. There is no definitive quality control behind it.
> Even if you follow the instructions, as best as you can, you will end
> up making stupid decisions for the distribution.
>
> Likewise with the franchise restaurants. The individual foods may be
> good. Many of the instructions on managing people, foods, customers,
> may be good.  But the whole concept of "purchase from some a supplier
> with undefined levels of cost and quality" is NOT a good instruction.
> Maybe that works for a lot of restaurants, but as a general rule it
> doesn't work for all of them. If you follow it to the letter, you will
> end up making stupid decisions for the restaurant.
>
> And here's your problem. The franchise instructions aren't supposed to
> just "work for a lot of restaurants". They're supposed to work for all
> of them. Likewise with the distribution. the distribution packages,
> rules, settings, etc, aren't supposed to be tailored for your own
> personal setup. They're supposed to work for anybody for whom the
> distribution is a target.
>
> You might want to say that maybe udev, or maybe this driver, or maybe
> this service, or that hardware breaks FHS and therefore Gentoo. But
> that's the wrong way of looking at it. when the important parts of
> something being boot critical depends on the system.

Sorry, again I pressed something and sent too early.

In the same way, the important parts of "purchase from the nearest
organic store" depends on the store. Since it's too vague a
requirement, different restaurants will end up with different results.
Because of that, you can't predict when a new recipe with different
ingredients will make the restaurant unprofitable.

Same with /usr. Different systems will end up with different
requirements of stuff in /usr. Because of that, you can't predict when
a new program with different requirements will be placed in an
inappropriate location.

/ and /usr being separated, without appropriate tools to handle
migration between the two, is bound to break stuff.
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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 01/10/2013 20:48, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:15:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
> 
>> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch 
>> installation.
> 
> Why? If ever there was a distro for people that didn't want to use
> defaults, Gentoo is it.
> 
>> Someone had to decide the defaults - so, what are they? Anyone?
> 
> I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
> in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
> portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers to /usr/portage.
> 
> 

Please say it isn't so, otherwise I'm going to look like a right royal
chump.

Or maybe I just change it all on automatic these days and forget it do
it. But it was definitely discussed on -dev at length. i could be wrong
about the end result <bashful>



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Greg Turner]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/10/2013 20:48, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:15:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>
>>> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch
>>> installation.
>>
>> Why? If ever there was a distro for people that didn't want to use
>> defaults, Gentoo is it.
>>
>>> Someone had to decide the defaults - so, what are they? Anyone?
>>
>> I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
>> in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
>> portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers to /usr/portage.
>>
>>
>
> Please say it isn't so, otherwise I'm going to look like a right royal
> chump.
>
> Or maybe I just change it all on automatic these days and forget it do
> it. But it was definitely discussed on -dev at length. i could be wrong
> about the end result <bashful>
>
Looks like it's still usr/portage here...

http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=blob;f=pym/portage/repository/config.py;h=0d6edf4e3e6dcffb0758caf859a597a8f0996bc0;hb=HEAD#l615

and here

http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=blob;f=cnf/repos.conf;h=8c657daae3259e42e01ea05c689b74293b5224a7;hb=HEAD#l5

I don't see repos.conf in gx86 and I don't see PORTDIR in any
gx86-provided make.defaults'es as of yesterday.

So I guess it's still usr/portage.

I do think I vaguely recall that discussion about /var too though...
frankly, /var seems more sensible ... but maybe that's a can of worms
I should not be opening in this thread :)

-gmt

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 15:51:01 -0700, Greg Turner wrote:

> I do think I vaguely recall that discussion about /var too though...
> frankly, /var seems more sensible ... but maybe that's a can of worms
> I should not be opening in this thread :)

I think it was one of those discussion where every could agree that /usr
was wrong but no one cold agree on where was right.

/var makes sense to me, it's where I put the tree (but not packages or
distfiles).


-- 
Neil Bothwick

I'm not closed minded, you're just wrong.

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[gentoo-user] Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable

[Thanasis]

Set PORTDIR for backward compatibility with various tools like:
euse - bug #474574
euses and ufed - bug #478318

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-01 2:48 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:15:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch
>> installation.

> Why?

While I'm not sure why it matters to you, it is because I have a policy 
that I never change the defaults for anything without a (good) reason.

> If ever there was a distro for people that didn't want to use
> defaults, Gentoo is it.

True, but irrelevant to my question...

>> Someone had to decide the defaults - so, what are they? Anyone?

> I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
> in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
> portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers to /usr/portage.

So you're saying Alan was wrong about /var being the new default...

Alan?

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 08:04:16 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:

> >> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch
> >> installation.  
> 
> > Why?  
> 
> While I'm not sure why it matters to you,

Just curious.

> it is because I have a policy 
> that I never change the defaults for anything without a (good) reason.

That's reasonable, but I feel there's a good reason here - the default
location sucks.

> > I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
> > in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
> > portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers
> > to /usr/portage.  
> 
> So you're saying Alan was wrong about /var being the new default...

Let's just say he appeared to misremember :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.  - Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"

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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-01 7:41 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> /var makes sense to me, it's where I put the tree (but not packages or
> distfiles).

Why not these?

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 02/10/2013 14:04, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-10-01 2:48 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:15:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch
>>> installation.
> 
>> Why?
> 
> While I'm not sure why it matters to you, it is because I have a policy
> that I never change the defaults for anything without a (good) reason.
> 
>> If ever there was a distro for people that didn't want to use
>> defaults, Gentoo is it.
> 
> True, but irrelevant to my question...
> 
>>> Someone had to decide the defaults - so, what are they? Anyone?
> 
>> I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
>> in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
>> portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers to /usr/portage.
> 
> So you're saying Alan was wrong about /var being the new default...
> 
> Alan?


Yes, I looks like I was wrong all along.

You should still move portage to var though. Consider it a local fix to
a long-standing bug.

Incidentally, do you know why the tree is in /usr? Because FreeBSD ports
puts it there. Why did they do that? Because FreeBSD is not Linux; it is
derived from SysV, which puts home directories and all manner of other
things in /usr.

It's as simple as that.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 02/10/2013 14:12, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 08:04:16 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
> 
>>>> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch
>>>> installation.  
>>
>>> Why?  
>>
>> While I'm not sure why it matters to you,
> 
> Just curious.
> 
>> it is because I have a policy 
>> that I never change the defaults for anything without a (good) reason.
> 
> That's reasonable, but I feel there's a good reason here - the default
> location sucks.
> 
>>> I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
>>> in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
>>> portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers
>>> to /usr/portage.  
>>
>> So you're saying Alan was wrong about /var being the new default...
> 
> Let's just say he appeared to misremember :)


A spade is a spade, not a hand-powered earth moving implement.

He was plain wrong :-)


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-02 8:28 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I looks like I was wrong all along.

I thought I was wrong once, but then discovered that I was mistaken... ;)

> You should still move portage to var though. Consider it a local fix to
> a long-standing bug.

I'm still waiting to hear why Neil doesn't move packages and distfiles 
there... sounded like he had a good reason...

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 08:23:07 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:

> > /var makes sense to me, it's where I put the tree (but not packages or
> > distfiles).  
> 
> Why not these?

Because they have no place in the portage tree. The portage tree contains
thousands of small files, but remains largely the same size. On the other
hand $DISTDIR and $PKGDIR contain files that are not controlled by
portage and grow continually without manual intervention.

I keep $DISTDIR on an NFS mount for the reason I gave earlier in this
thread, to save downloading the files more than once. I have $PKGDIR on
the same mount, which is also used for overlays. I would rather have that
directory, which is only used for portage files, hit 100% when I'm not
looking that /var or /usr.

If I were running a single Gentoo machine, I'd probably put $DISTDIR in
the logical place of /var/cache (that's where other package managers
keep their downloads) and use eclean-dist to stop it overflowing, or put
a quota on the directory.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If Satan ever loses his hair, there'll be hell toupee.

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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon]

On 02/10/2013 14:53, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-10-02 8:28 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yes, I looks like I was wrong all along.
> 
> I thought I was wrong once, but then discovered that I was mistaken... ;)
> 
>> You should still move portage to var though. Consider it a local fix to
>> a long-standing bug.
> 
> I'm still waiting to hear why Neil doesn't move packages and distfiles
> there... sounded like he had a good reason...
> 


He's English, and old(-ish)

My money says he forgot.

:-)

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:47:14 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> > I'm still waiting to hear why Neil doesn't move packages and distfiles
> > there... sounded like he had a good reason...

> He's English, and old(-ish)
> 
> My money says he forgot.

Misremembered actually.

In fact, I replied when I saw it, I sometimes go an hour without checking
my email (but not often)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

How stupid are people?  Send me £10 to find out.

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Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[the]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 09/29/13 15:03, Greg Woodbury wrote:
> On 09/29/2013 06:55 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> 
>> why do you bring up udev and systemd AT ALL?
>> 
>> They are not the problem or the reason why seperate /usr is prone
>> to break.
>> 
> Except that systemd *is* why a seperate /usr is broken now. Parts
> of the libraries that systemd depend on we *deliberately* placed in
> /usr despite the fact that they are needed to bbring the system to
> an operational state.  For *years* things required to boot the
> system were defined to be in the root file system, and items not
> required until after mounting had been accomplished were to be
> placed in /usr.

Why would someone do that?

> BTW: There is a standard (The File System Hierarch Standard - FSS)
> that existed and described this behaviour.  It was killed off by
> deliberate vendor refusals to support or adhere to it.  In
> frustration, the folks involved simply gave up.
> 

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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-02 11:31 AM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> Because they have no place in the portage tree. The portage tree contains
> thousands of small files, but remains largely the same size. On the other
> hand $DISTDIR and $PKGDIR contain files that are not controlled by
> portage and grow continually without manual intervention.

Ah... so you did move them from /usr, just not into /var/portage...

Ok, thanks much guys... guess I'll go with Alans layout as it makes the 
most sense to me:

/var/portage
/var/distfiles
/var/packages

Thanks again...

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-02 2:24 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> Ok, thanks much guys... guess I'll go with Alans layout as it makes the
> most sense to me:
>
> /var/portage
> /var/distfiles
> /var/packages

Actually, I think I like:

/var/portage/tree
/var/portage/distfiles
/var/portage/packages

better... :)

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Jonathan Callen]

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Hash: SHA512

On 09/30/2013 06:22 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:01:27 +0200, Hinnerk van Bruinehsen wrote:
> 
>>> mount /usr -o remount,ro mkdir /newusr rsync -a /usr/ /new/usr/ Comment out /usr line in
>>> /etc/fstab mv /usr /oldusr mv /newusr /usr reboot rmdir /oldusr
>>> 
>>> What you do with the old partition is up to you. In this case the discussion was about /usr
>>> on LVM, so you just delete it and allocate the space elsewhere when needed.
> 
>> You can even leave out the step of creating a new directory and moving it later if you
>> bind-mount you rootfs somewhere, e.g. /mnt/gentoo.
> 
> Good point.
> 
>> You may want to add some parameters to the call to rsync, though (e.g. those that preserve
>> permissions, xattrs (especially for SELinux or XT-PaX) and owner/group (should be -pogX),
> 
> -a covers most if not all of those.
> 
>> possibly -x aswell (if you have other filesystems under /usr (e.g. a discrete FS for the
>> portage tree).
> 
> Another good point, one of those things you think of immediately after hitting Send :(
> 
> 

Specifically, I would use -axAHX (-rlptgoD are implied by -a, but -HAX are not).

- From rsync(1):

- -a	archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
- -r	recurse into directories
- -l	copy symlinks as symlinks
- -p	preserve permissions
- -t	preserve modification times
- -g	preserve group
- -o	preserve owner
- -D	preserve device files and special files
- -H	preserve hard links
- -A	preserve ACLs (implies -p)
- -X	preserve extended attributes
- -x	don't cross filesystem boundaries

- -- 
Jonathan Callen
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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[joost]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1257 bytes --]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 01/10/2013 20:48, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:15:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> 
>>> I'm interested in what the DEFAULTS are, ie, for a new/from scratch 
>>> installation.
>> 
>> Why? If ever there was a distro for people that didn't want to use
>> defaults, Gentoo is it.
>> 
>>> Someone had to decide the defaults - so, what are they? Anyone?
>> 
>> I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
>> in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
>> portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers to
>/usr/portage.
>> 
>> 
>
>Please say it isn't so, otherwise I'm going to look like a right royal
>chump.
>
>Or maybe I just change it all on automatic these days and forget it do
>it. But it was definitely discussed on -dev at length. i could be wrong
>about the end result <bashful>
>
>
>
>-- 
>Alan McKinnon
>alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

You always grab the latest stage3?
I generally make a copy of an exiating up-to-date system and use that.

That works best as they all use NFS and  set of links for portage.

--
Joost
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 03 Oct 2013 07:48:59 +0200, joost@antarean.org wrote:

> >On 01/10/2013 20:48, Neil Bothwick wrote:

> >> I installed a VM a couple of weeks ago and I'm sure portage was still
> >> in /usr. It's easy enough to tell, unpack a stage 3 and see where the
> >> portage directory lives, but the handbook still refers to
> >/usr/portage.

> You always grab the latest stage3?
> I generally make a copy of an exiating up-to-date system and use that.
> 
> That works best as they all use NFS and  set of links for portage.

Not always, but this time I wanted a vanilla install to try out systemd.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning
to others.

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Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Yuri K. Shatroff]

On 02.10.2013 16:28, Alan McKinnon wrote:
[ ... ]
> You should still move portage to var though. Consider it a local fix to
> a long-standing bug.
>
> Incidentally, do you know why the tree is in /usr? Because FreeBSD ports
> puts it there. Why did they do that? Because FreeBSD is not Linux; it is
> derived from SysV, which puts home directories and all manner of other
> things in /usr.

I apologize but I always thought that it's Linux that derives from AT&T 
SysV (1983), while FreeBSD derives from ... BSD (1978). How come then 
Linux uses SysV init and BSD does not? ;)

As to ports placement in FreeBSD, I have never seen any reason to do it 
the other way, IMHO /var should not be polluted with huge amounts of 
data which is not runtime-related and may occupy tens of gigs (in case 
of OOo or LO compilation), rather what I always do (in FreeBSD and in 
Gentoo) is just put all ports/portage on a separate partition with 
performance-optimized settings (striping, noatime etc). And I'd really 
seriously object to putting portage under /var if my opinion were to be 
considered...
I also don't like the approach of putting into /var stuff like databases 
and other important data. /var is system-related runtime stuff, and data 
should always be separate. This also helps keep /var small and neat and 
apply to it a different backup policy than to data and portage.


> It's as simple as that.
>
>


-- 
Best wishes,
Yuri K. Shatroff

Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 03.10.2013 11:00, schrieb Yuri K. Shatroff:
> I apologize but I always thought that it's Linux that derives from
> AT&T SysV (1983), while FreeBSD derives from ... BSD (1978). How come
> then Linux uses SysV init and BSD does not? ;)

no, no and no.

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[James]

Gregory Shearman <zekeyg <at> gmail.com> writes:


> b) The important reason I need an initramfs is that I have my root
> filesystems on LVM partitions (except for my ARM servers). 

Hello Gregory,

Please tell me, as much as you are confortable  with, 
about your ARM servers....


Running Gentoo?  Running Embedded Gentoo?  Which kernels? 
HDD ? File Systems? Configurations, Grub 2? LVM, RAID ?
Typical usage?


What install docs did you follow?
Any suggestions on setting up ARM servers, cluster,
and such are most welcome.

etc etc etc.
curiously,
James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Gregory Shearman]

In linux.gentoo.user, James wrote:
> Gregory Shearman <zekeyg <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>> b) The important reason I need an initramfs is that I have my root
>> filesystems on LVM partitions (except for my ARM servers). 
>
> Hello Gregory,
>
> Please tell me, as much as you are confortable  with, 
> about your ARM servers....

I'm running 2 servers at the moment. They are very low power and they
mainly serve my home network. One is a Marvell Sheevaplug (single core
1.2GHZ 512MB memory) and has been running reliably for many years. The
other is a Texas Instruments Pandaboard (2 core Cortex A9 Processor -
1Gb memory) .  I've only had the Panda since October last year and it is
also a very reliable server (with added GUI HDMI benefits!).

> Running Gentoo?  Running Embedded Gentoo?  Which kernels? 
> HDD ? File Systems? Configurations, Grub 2? LVM, RAID ?

Both servers are running Gentoo Stable... therefore current kernels (for
their architecture). Both have external HDD attached via USB.

File systems: root filesystem is on an SDHC card (2nd partition). Other
filesystems (except for the boot partition) are all on LVM. I have
/usr/src, /usr/portage, /usr/portage/distfiles is a symlink to
/var/www/localhost/gentoo/distfiles (another filesystem). I also have
/var/tmp/portage on a separate filesystem and I also run a postgresql
database server which also has its own partition on
/var/lib/postgresql/<version>. Both servers have the same setup as I'm
currently in the process of replacing the sheevaplug with the panda.

Grub? There's no such thing on ARM machines. The kernel or uImage looks
for the first partition on the configured root device (SDHC on my
systems) the first partition MUST be VFAT (unfortunately) and it
contains the u-boot bootloader and the kernel (uImage). Kernels are
built the same way as x86 kernels except you do "make uImage" instead of
"make bzImage".

LVM? All the above filesystems, except the root partition and the boot
partition are LVM volumes. Filesystems are mostly Ext4 (very
conventional).

RAID? Nope.

> Typical usage?

Print server, database server, backups, webserver - which includes serving gentoo
portage and distfiles to other machines on the network (THTTPD is a
great minimal web server).

> What install docs did you follow?

Sheevaplug:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/sheevaplug/install.xml#install

Pandaboard:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/pandaboard/install.xml

It's easy.

> Any suggestions on setting up ARM servers, cluster,
> and such are most welcome.

ARM servers aren't much different to other servers but you must realise
that these are low powered devices (the ones I run anyway) and aren't
really suited to large loads. They especially suit a small business or
home hobbyist environment. Even so, compiling Gentoo, especially on the
Panda is not a problem and doesn't take forever (except for gcc
updates 8-)).

I suppose you could cluster a number of these devices but I think it
would be more efficient to use a more powerful server running servers as
virtual machines.

-- 
Regards,
Gregory.

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[James]

Gregory Shearman <zekeyg <at> gmail.com> writes:


> Both servers are running Gentoo Stable... therefore current kernels (for
> their architecture). Both have external HDD attached via USB.

Hey Greg,

If you just "reply" to the thread, we can keep one continuous 
thread going in lieu of a new posting each time.

Let's just look at the Panda board. I have a first rev panda to
experiment with. 

So a HDD via USB 2.0? fast enough for a Postgrsql database?
A bit more on the HDD setup (hardware) would be keen. 
Did you ever try to run this on a straight USB stick and not
the performance difference?


> File systems: root filesystem is on an SDHC card (2nd partition). Other
> filesystems (except for the boot partition) are all on LVM. I have
> /usr/src, /usr/portage, /usr/portage/distfiles is a symlink to
> /var/www/localhost/gentoo/distfiles (another filesystem). I also have
> /var/tmp/portage on a separate filesystem and I also run a postgresql
> database server which also has its own partition on
> /var/lib/postgresql/≤version>. Both servers have the same setup as I'm
> currently in the process of replacing the sheevaplug with the panda.

Postgresql on a separate partition, nice idea. Do you aggresively
manage  the PG server or is it just a recreational (light duty)
usage?

>
> Grub? There's no such thing on ARM machines. The kernel or uImage looks
> for the first partition on the configured root device (SDHC on my
> systems) the first partition MUST be VFAT (unfortunately) and it
> contains the u-boot bootloader and the kernel (uImage). 

https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Grub2

https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Kernel/ACPI/AcpiOnArndaleUefi

> Kernels are built the same way as x86 kernels except you do 
> "make uImage" instead of "make bzImage".

You Compile the kernels on a x86 host or compile them directly on
the Arm chip?

Then you put new kernels on the SD and swap those out to test/use
newer kernels on the Arm systems?


> LVM? All the above filesystems, except the root partition and the boot
> partition are LVM volumes. Filesystems are mostly Ext4 (very
> conventional).

What, no ZFS.....? Wait till Alan heards about this.....
Grub2 on ARM will allow many new file systems, and that
is the key issue with robust Arm servers, right now, imho.

> > Typical usage?

> Print server, database server, backups, webserver - which 
> includes serving gentoo portage and distfiles to other machines 
> on the network (THTTPD is a great minimal web server).

> > Any suggestions on setting up ARM servers, cluster,
> > and such are most welcome.

> ARM servers aren't much different to other servers but you must realise
> that these are low powered devices (the ones I run anyway) and aren't
> really suited to large loads. They especially suit a small business or
> home hobbyist environment. Even so, compiling Gentoo, especially on the
> Panda is not a problem and doesn't take forever (except for gcc
> updates ).

What does your make.conf look like on the panda?

> I suppose you could cluster a number of these devices but I think it
> would be more efficient to use a more powerful server running servers as
> virtual machines.


No BTRFS or CEPH?  (just teasing, but seriously....)

http://armservers.com/tag/ceph/
http://www.inktank.com/calxeda/

I posted previously on some Arm (A15) based systems, you may want to
look at for your next arm server, recently. Many have SATA 3 interfaces.

If you look at the ARM installation (handbook) docs, it is need of a
re_vamping.   I'm certain that folks would appreciate your
participation in the modernization of the ARM handbook, via the
Gentoo wiki.   The Gentoo wiki is your (ARM) friend....

I'm very happy, you are sharing your (ARM) gentoo experiences herein.


James

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[walt]

On 09/29/2013 04:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

> As much as I hate systemd

My Alzheimer's prevents me from remembering your reasons for hating systemd.
Would you *very* briefly refresh my memory, please?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 08.10.2013 02:03, schrieb walt:
> On 09/29/2013 04:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> As much as I hate systemd
> My Alzheimer's prevents me from remembering your reasons for hating systemd.
> Would you *very* briefly refresh my memory, please?
>
>
>
simple: one tool to do one job. text output to pipe into other tools.
Small is better.

systemd violates all of them. Also: dishonesty.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[William Hubbs]

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On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 08:11:48PM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 08.10.2013 02:03, schrieb walt:
> > On 09/29/2013 04:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> >
> >> As much as I hate systemd
> > My Alzheimer's prevents me from remembering your reasons for hating systemd.
> > Would you *very* briefly refresh my memory, please?
> >
> >
> >
> simple: one tool to do one job. text output to pipe into other tools.
> Small is better.

I'm not a strong systemd hater or anything, but this is my concern
about the way it is designed as well; process 1 is way too complex.

There is some interest in s6 [1], which is now in ~arch on amd64 and
x86. It seems to be a pretty simple design.

We haven't written anything for it yet, but it may be able to be
integrated into OpenRC to provide service supervision, which is the main
feature systemd offers, in my opinion, which we do not have in our
current OpenRC setup.

William

[1] http://www.skarnet.org/software/s6

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[gottlieb]

On Sun, Sep 29 2013, tanstaafl@libertytrek.org wrote:

> On 2013-09-29 2:55 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> I am the OpenRC author/maintainer and a member of base-system. I can
>> tell you that we are not discussing forcing systemd on everyone in
>> Gentoo Linux as a default init system. I can also tell you that I am not
>> aware of the Gentoo systemd team discussing this. Even if they were, a
>> distro-wide change like this would have to be brought before the
>> Council.
>
> Ok, good enough for me until other evidence comes along to cast doubt
> as to the truthfulness or sincerity of your statement.
>
> Thanks William...
>
> Now to try to get up enough nerve to attempt to merge my /usr
> (currently on LVM partition) into my / (does have enough room, and
> will leave me with a 19GB / partition with about 5GB free).
>
> Anyone see a problem with that (only 5GB free on my / after the /usr merge)?

I understand the need to get up nerve.  That was the hardest part for
me, and took by far, the most time.  I did *not* have room in / for /usr
but *did* have an online external disk on the machine with lots of room
(Alan's "what I should have done" scheme).  I could afford downtime so I
did everything booted from an installation CD so that nothing would
change.

1.  Booted minimal installation CD
2.  Copied my 5 lvs (/usr, /opt, /var, /tmp, /local) 
    and my / to the external disk and called them old-root, old-usr,
    old-opt, old-var, old-tmp, old-local.
3.  Repartitioned the internal disk to make root bigger.
4.  Created the vg and pv (I have just one of each).
5.  Created the 5 filesystems (root, /opt, /var, /tmp, /local), with the
    last 4 on LVM
6.  Copied old-root to / and old-usr to /usr
7.  Mounted the 4 lvs and copied old-opt to /opt, old-var to /var, ...

Reboot

It worked.

Notes.

1.  I had grub in the MBR so that didn't change
2.  The root fs remained the same partition number (/dev/sda3),
    so didn't have to change grub.
3.  In fact /dev/sda3 maintained the same starting location in the new
    partitioning scheme, but I don't think that was relevant.

allan

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[walt]

On 10/08/2013 09:16 PM, William Hubbs wrote:

> to provide service supervision, which is the main
> feature systemd offers

By supervision do you mean restarting a service after it crashes, for example?

Or something else completely?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[William Hubbs]

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On Wed, Oct 09, 2013 at 05:24:39PM -0700, walt wrote:
> On 10/08/2013 09:16 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> 
> > to provide service supervision, which is the main
> > feature systemd offers
> 
> By supervision do you mean restarting a service after it crashes, for example?

Right. This is one of the more significant features that OpenRC doesn't
have yet.

William

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 10.10.2013 16:46, schrieb William Hubbs:
> On Wed, Oct 09, 2013 at 05:24:39PM -0700, walt wrote:
>> On 10/08/2013 09:16 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
>>
>>> to provide service supervision, which is the main
>>> feature systemd offers
>> By supervision do you mean restarting a service after it crashes, for example?
> Right. This is one of the more significant features that OpenRC doesn't
> have yet.
>
> William

why?

if something like sshd crashes, you either have a hardware problem or
sshd is buggy. Either way, better not be pampered over with a silent
service restart.

The rest is so visible (or audible - like fancontrol) that you know that
there is a problem.

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 10/10/13, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

> if something like sshd crashes, you either have a hardware problem or
> sshd is buggy. Either way, better not be pampered over with a silent
> service restart.

So, restarting a service should not be silent (I think it isn't) and
might need better alerts. Oh, don't the admin have the tools for this
already (sendmail, motd, snmp, whatever)?

I'm not pretending the current situation is perfect but if admins are
tired to configure alerts on their own, it should not be that hard to
improve and factorize efforts (at Gentoo at least, if not upstream).

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Alan McKinnon]

On 11/10/2013 09:54, Steven J. Long wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:04:38AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On 29/09/2013 23:41, Dale wrote:
>>> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>>> On 29/09/2013 18:33, Dale wrote:
>>>>>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>>>>>>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>>>>>>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
>>>>> If not, then what was it?  You seem to know what it was that started it
>>>>> so why not share?
>>>>>
>>>> He already said it. Someone added a hard disk to a PDP-9 (or was it an 11?)
>>>>
>>>> Literally. It all traces back to that. In those days there was no such
>>>> thing as volume management or raid. If you added a (seriously expensive)
>>>> disk the only feasible way to get it's storage in the system was to
>>>> mount it as a separate volume.
>>>>
>>>> >From that one single action this entire mess of separate /usr arose as
>>>> folks discovered more and more reasons to consider it good and keep it
>>>> around
> 
> Yes you elide over that part, but it's central: there were more and more
> reasons to consider it good, and to use it. You said it.
> 
> They haven't gone away just because some prat's had a brainwave and needs a
> lie-down, not encouragement. In fact most of them are touted as "USPs" in the
> propaganda we get told is a reasoned argument for ditching all our collective
> experience.
> 
>>>
>>> That wasn't the question tho.  My question wasn't about many years ago
>>> but who made the change that broke support for a seperate /usr with no
>>> init thingy.  The change that happened in the past few years.
>>>
>>> I think I got my answer already tho.  Seems William Hubbs answered it
>>> but I plan to read his message again.  Different thread tho.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nobody "broke" it.
>>
>> It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some
>> random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to
>> work out fine that is broken.
>>
>> It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use
>> the code in /usr at that point in the sequence.
> 
> Actually because people put *thinking* into what things were needed in early
> boot and what were not. In fact *exactly the same* thinking that goes into
> sorting out an initramfs. Only you don't need to keep syncing it, and you
> don't need to worry about missing stuff. Or you never used to, given a
> reasonably competent distro. Which was half the point in using one.
> 
> Thankfully software like agetty deliberately has tight linkage, and it's
> simple enough to move the two or three things that need it to rootfs; it's
> even officially fine as far as portage is concerned (though I do get an
> _anticipated_ warning on glibc upgrades.)
> 
>> More and more we are
>> seeing that this is no longer the case.
>>
>> So no-one broke it with a specific commit.
> 
> True enough. Cumulative lack of discipline is to blame, although personally
> I blame gmake's insane rewriting of lib deps before the linker even sees
> them, that makes $+ a lot less useful than it should be, and imo led to a
> general desire not to deal with linkage in the early days of Linux, that
> never went away.
> 
>> It has always been broken by
>> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
>> fluke.
> 
> *cough* bullsh1t.
> 
>> IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.
> 
> Indeed: and even more rife with a history of One True Way. So much so
> that it's a cliche. Somehow it's now seen as "hip" to be crap at your
> craft, unable to recognise an ABI, and cool to subscribe to "N + 1"
> True Way, as that's an "innovation" on the old form of garbage.
> 
> And yet GIGO will still apply, traditional as it may be.

I have no idea what you are trying to communicate or accomplish with this.

All I see in all your responses is that you are railing against why
things are no longer the way they used to be.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

[gentoo-user] Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Steven J. Long]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:04:38AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 29/09/2013 23:41, Dale wrote:
> > Alan McKinnon wrote:
> >> On 29/09/2013 18:33, Dale wrote:
> >>>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
> >>>>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
> >>>>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
> >>> If not, then what was it?  You seem to know what it was that started it
> >>> so why not share?
> >>>
> >> He already said it. Someone added a hard disk to a PDP-9 (or was it an 11?)
> >>
> >> Literally. It all traces back to that. In those days there was no such
> >> thing as volume management or raid. If you added a (seriously expensive)
> >> disk the only feasible way to get it's storage in the system was to
> >> mount it as a separate volume.
> >>
> >> >From that one single action this entire mess of separate /usr arose as
> >> folks discovered more and more reasons to consider it good and keep it
> >> around

Yes you elide over that part, but it's central: there were more and more
reasons to consider it good, and to use it. You said it.

They haven't gone away just because some prat's had a brainwave and needs a
lie-down, not encouragement. In fact most of them are touted as "USPs" in the
propaganda we get told is a reasoned argument for ditching all our collective
experience.

> > 
> > That wasn't the question tho.  My question wasn't about many years ago
> > but who made the change that broke support for a seperate /usr with no
> > init thingy.  The change that happened in the past few years.
> > 
> > I think I got my answer already tho.  Seems William Hubbs answered it
> > but I plan to read his message again.  Different thread tho.
> 
> 
> 
> Nobody "broke" it.
> 
> It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some
> random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to
> work out fine that is broken.
> 
> It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use
> the code in /usr at that point in the sequence.

Actually because people put *thinking* into what things were needed in early
boot and what were not. In fact *exactly the same* thinking that goes into
sorting out an initramfs. Only you don't need to keep syncing it, and you
don't need to worry about missing stuff. Or you never used to, given a
reasonably competent distro. Which was half the point in using one.

Thankfully software like agetty deliberately has tight linkage, and it's
simple enough to move the two or three things that need it to rootfs; it's
even officially fine as far as portage is concerned (though I do get an
_anticipated_ warning on glibc upgrades.)

> More and more we are
> seeing that this is no longer the case.
> 
> So no-one broke it with a specific commit.

True enough. Cumulative lack of discipline is to blame, although personally
I blame gmake's insane rewriting of lib deps before the linker even sees
them, that makes $+ a lot less useful than it should be, and imo led to a
general desire not to deal with linkage in the early days of Linux, that
never went away.

> It has always been broken by
> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
> fluke.

*cough* bullsh1t.

> IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.

Indeed: and even more rife with a history of One True Way. So much so
that it's a cliche. Somehow it's now seen as "hip" to be crap at your
craft, unable to recognise an ABI, and cool to subscribe to "N + 1"
True Way, as that's an "innovation" on the old form of garbage.

And yet GIGO will still apply, traditional as it may be.

Peace and hugs ;)
steveL
-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

[gentoo-user] Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Steven J. Long]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 11:37:53PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:05:39 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> 
> > > If *something1* at boot time requires access to *something2* at boot
> > > time that isn't available then I would say that *something1* is broken
> > > by design not the *something2*.  
> > 
> >   What about the case where *something2* *USED TO BE AVAILABLE, BUT HAS
> > BEEN MOVED TO /USR* ?
> 
> What about the case where something1 wasn't required at boot time but
> changed circumstances mean it now is?

What about it? Honestly it's like you lot don't know the basics of scripting
or something. $PATH ffs.

(And don't start on at me about badly-coded apps: fix the apps, or the ebuilds
not the OS: it's not broken, and certainly does not need to worked-around.)

> > > So I would argue that devs relying on /usr always being there have
> > > broken the "system".  
> > 
> >   So I would argue that unnecessarily moving stuff into /usr is
> > deliberate sabotage, designed to break *something1*.
> 
> Define unnecessarily in that context? You can't, not for all use cases.
> There are many files that clearly need to be available early on, and many
> more that clearly do not. Between them is a huge grey area, files that
> some need and some don't, that may be needed now or at some indeterminate
> point in the future. If you put everything that may conceivably be needed
> at early boot into /, you shift a large chunk of /usr/*bin/ and /usr/lib*
> into /, effectively negating the point of a small, lean /. That puts us
> right back where we started, try to define a point of separation that
> cannot be defined.

Funny, sounds a lot like deciding what to put in an initramfs. And frankly
it's untrue[2]. Most of the core system utilities have long been intended to
run people's systems. All you need to do is stop pretending "nu-skool" rubbish
is as good as the stuff that's survived decades of use. By definition the
latter is a much smaller pool of much higher-quality than the mountains of
new unproven and untested stuff, that keeps falling over in real life.

Exactly the same happened back then: we just don't see the admittedly smaller
mountains of crap that fell by the wayside after a year or five.

> initramfs is the new /, for varying values of new since most distros have
> been doing it that way for well over a decade.

Only it's not, since you're responsible for keeping it in sync with the main
system. And for making sure it has everything you need. And hoping they don't
change incompatibly between root and initramfs.
 
The point is the burden has shifted, and made the distribution less of a
distribution and more of a "DIY, and tough sh1t if it don't work, you get
to pick up the pieces we broke" irrespective of how many scripts you provide
to do work that was never needed before, and technically is not needed now[1]

It will break. Everything does at some point or another. So I for one don't
need the extra hassle from a totally unnecessary extra point of failure.

Good luck to you if that's how you roll; just don't tell me what choices I
should make, thanks.

Regards,
steveL.

[1] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-901206.html
[2] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-901206-start-75.html
..shows how few things you actually need to move. Note portage is fine with
the directory symlinks from /usr to / (I checked with zmedico before I wrote
it up.) Also the bug in lvm initscript got fixed, but I still much prefer my
machine to have the few extra MB in rootfs, and be able to chuckle at all
the eleventy-eleven FUD about those 2 directories.

-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

[gentoo-user] Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Steven J. Long]

On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 06:35:58PM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> >> wrong analogy and it goes down from here. Really.
> > Ohh, but they are inspired on YOUR analogy, so guess how wrong yours was.
> 
> your trolling is weak. And since I never saw anything worth reading
> posted by you, you are very close to plonk territory right now.

If his analogies are weak, that's deliberate: to show that your analogy is just
as weak. Irrespective of why /usr was first added, or that it was in fact what
/home now is, it's proven useful in many contexts. That you don't accept that,
won't convince anyone who's lived that truth. All you'll do is argue in circles
about irrelevance.
 
> > The setup of a separate /usr on a networked system was used in amongst
> > other places a few swedish universities.
> 
> seperate /usr on network has been used in a lot of places. So what? Does
> that prove anything?
> Nope, it doesn't.

Er quite obviously it proves that a separate /usr can be useful. In fact so
much so that all the benefits of the above setup are claimed by that god-awful
"why split usr is broken because we are dumbasses who got kicked out of the
kernel and think that userspace doesn't need stability" post, as if they never
existed before, and could not exist without a rootfs/usr merge.
 
> Seriously, /var is a good candidate for a seperate partition. /usr is not.

They both are. Not very convincing is it?
Seriously, if you don't see the need for one, good for you. Just stop telling
us what to think, will you?

> >>>> too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.
> >>> Too bad separate /usr is much older than initramfs.
> >> too bad that initramfs and initrd are pretty good solutions to the
> >> problem of hidden breakage caused by seperate /usr.
> >> If you are smart enough to setup an nfs server, I suppose you are smart
> >> enough to run dracut/genkernel&co.
> > If you are smart enough to run "dracut/genkernel&co" I suppose you are
> > smart enough to see the wrongness of your initial statement "too bad
> > POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS."
> 
> too bad I am right and you are and idiot.
> 
> Originally, the name "POSIX" referred to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, released
> in 1988. The family of POSIX standards is formally designated as IEEE
> 1003 and the international standard name is ISO/IEC 9945.
> The standards, formerly known as IEEE-IX, emerged from a project that
> began circa 1985. Richard Stallman suggested the name POSIX to the IEEE.
> The committee found it more easily pronounceable and memorable, so it
> adopted it
> 
> That is from wikipedia.
> 
> 1985/1988. When were LSB/FHS created again?
> 
> FHS in 1994. Hm....

You really are obtuse. You should try to consider what *point* the other person
is trying to make before you mouth off with "superior knowledge" that completely
misses it.

> *plonk*

ditto. AFAIC you're the one who pulled insults out, when in fact you were
*completely* missing the point.

Bravo. 

-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Steven J. Long]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 09:17:02PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:04:41 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> 
> > > I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> > > unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically
> > > for this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> > > mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
> > 
> > Who else is there to blame?  We are continually being told that a
> > separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of
> > <insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake.  This gets
> > patronising really quickly.  (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here.  I
> > appreciate that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else
> > round here.)
> 
> It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction, now it
> has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer devote the
> increasing time needed to support what has now become an dge case.

Yeah and that's just vague crap without content ;)

> > No, this breaking of separate /usr was done by some specific project,
> > some specific person, even, in a supreme display of incompetence,
> > malice, or arrogance.  How come this project and this person have
> > managed to maintain such a low profile?  There seems to have been some
> > sort of conspiracy to do this breakage in secret, each member of the
> > coven pushing the plot until the damage was irrevocable.  Who was it?
> 
> So which was it, one specific person or a coven of conspirators? This is
> open source, secret conspiracies don't really work well. If this really
> was such a bad move, do you really think the likes of Greg K-H would not
> have stepped in? Or is he a conspirator too?

No he's just a bit naive: he wants to believe the best of people and did
not realise quite how sneaky Poettering is. No doubt he still doesn't. But
I'm sure he never foresaw some of their shenanighans, such as claiming their
newly inserted breakage was the fault of device-drivers and everyone should
switch to their funky new way of loading modules. No-one seemed to think
what Torvalds said was incorrect, even if they disagreed with his tone.

And yet that's exactly the same crap they pull in user-space, only they seem
to think the kernel mentality of "userspace is crazy" is a howto methodology.

-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 09:36:02 +0100, Steven J. Long wrote:

> > It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction,
> > now it has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer
> > devote the increasing time needed to support what has now become an
> > dge case.  
> 
> Yeah and that's just vague crap without content ;)

I bow to your superior expertise in that field :)

> > So which was it, one specific person or a coven of conspirators? This
> > is open source, secret conspiracies don't really work well. If this
> > really was such a bad move, do you really think the likes of Greg K-H
> > would not have stepped in? Or is he a conspirator too?  
> 
> No he's just a bit naive: he wants to believe the best of people and did
> not realise quite how sneaky Poettering is. No doubt he still doesn't.
> But I'm sure he never foresaw some of their shenanighans, such as
> claiming their newly inserted breakage was the fault of device-drivers
> and everyone should switch to their funky new way of loading modules.
> No-one seemed to think what Torvalds said was incorrect, even if they
> disagreed with his tone.

I don't understand why people keep banging on about Poettering in this,
previously finished, thread. The announcement was made by the OpenRC
maintainer and applies equally to those running eudev as udev. That is,
systems free of that individual's influence. Whatever anyone's opinion of
the way he is taking things, and for the record I don't like systemd,
this is a situation that arose without his help.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 09:16:50 +0100, Steven J. Long wrote:

> > initramfs is the new /, for varying values of new since most distros
> > have been doing it that way for well over a decade.  
> 
> Only it's not, since you're responsible for keeping it in sync with the
> main system.

No I'm not, the kernel makefile takes care of that very nicely thank you
very much.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Hell:  Filling out the paperwork to get into Heaven.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Steven J. Long]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 09:50:05AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 11/10/2013 09:54, Steven J. Long wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:04:38AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> >> On 29/09/2013 23:41, Dale wrote:
> >>> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> >>>> >From that one single action this entire mess of separate /usr arose as
> >>>> folks discovered more and more reasons to consider it good and keep it
> >>>> around
> > 
> > Yes you elide over that part, but it's central: there were more and more
> > reasons to consider it good, and to use it. You said it.
> > 
<snip>

> >> It has always been broken by
> >> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by
> >> fluke.
> > 
> > *cough* bullsh1t.
> > 
> >> IT and computing is rife with this kind of error.
> > 
> > Indeed: and even more rife with a history of One True Way. So much so
> > that it's a cliche. Somehow it's now seen as "hip" to be crap at your
> > craft, unable to recognise an ABI, and cool to subscribe to "N + 1"
> > True Way, as that's an "innovation" on the old form of garbage.
> > 
> > And yet GIGO will still apply, traditional as it may be.
> 
> I have no idea what you are trying to communicate or accomplish with this.

Oh my bad, I thought this was an informal discussion. On a formal level, I
was correcting your assumption, presented as a fact, that the only reason root
and /usr split has worked in the past is some sort of fluke.

Further your conflation of basic errors in software design with a "solution"
to anything at all: the same problems still go on wrt initramfs, only now
the effort is fractured into polarised camps.

> All I see in all your responses is that you are railing against why
> things are no longer the way they used to be.

That's just casting aspersions, so I'll treat it as beneath you.

It's certainly beneath me.
-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

[gentoo-user] Re: Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Steven J. Long]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 09:42:33AM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 09:36:02 +0100, Steven J. Long wrote:
> 
> > > It's evolution. Linux has for years been moving in this direction,
> > > now it has reached the point where the Gentoo devs can no longer
> > > devote the increasing time needed to support what has now become an
> > > dge case.  
> > 
> > Yeah and that's just vague crap without content ;)
> 
> I bow to your superior expertise in that field :)

Yup I have to filter out crap all day every day, usually crap I wrote.
 
> > > So which was it, one specific person or a coven of conspirators? This
> > > is open source, secret conspiracies don't really work well. If this
> > > really was such a bad move, do you really think the likes of Greg K-H
> > > would not have stepped in? Or is he a conspirator too?  
> > 
> > No he's just a bit naive: he wants to believe the best of people and did
> > not realise quite how sneaky Poettering is. No doubt he still doesn't.
> > But I'm sure he never foresaw some of their shenanighans, such as
> > claiming their newly inserted breakage was the fault of device-drivers
> > and everyone should switch to their funky new way of loading modules.
> > No-one seemed to think what Torvalds said was incorrect, even if they
> > disagreed with his tone.
> 
> I don't understand why people keep banging on about Poettering in this,
> previously finished, thread.

You brought up the background, wrt Greg K-H. Regardless of how you feel, I'm
not alone in considering Poettering's (and Seivers') behaviour underhanded.

And all this stuff about the "situation just arose" is only true, if you
accept Poettering's propaganda^W arguments as given. So yes, he's very
relevant.

Sorry for not keeping current with the threads; I'll not post any more to
respect the deadline..

-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 12:27:59 +0100, Steven J. Long wrote:

> > I don't understand why people keep banging on about Poettering in
> > this, previously finished, thread.  
> 
> You brought up the background, wrt Greg K-H. Regardless of how you
> feel, I'm not alone in considering Poettering's (and Seivers')
> behaviour underhanded.

You're not. While I'm loathe to use words like underhanded, I certainly
don't like the direction things are taking with systemd. I'm not
defending them, but I don't see this as their fault. The potential for
breakage was always there, their way of dong things just found it sooner.

> And all this stuff about the "situation just arose" is only true, if you
> accept Poettering's propaganda^W arguments as given. So yes, he's very
> relevant.

We''ll just have o disagree on his relevance here. the problem is that
the split is arbitrary, there is no clear definition of what is and is
not needed at boot time for all systems, and that is going to lead to
incorrect decisions made with the best of intentions (not that I am
accusing the previously mentioned of having those).


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I
can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 11 Oct 2013 12:55:55 Neil Bothwick wrote:

> While I'm loathe to use words like underhanded, ...

<pedant>
	Not "loathe" here but "loath" or even "loth".
</pedant>

(Just to help non-native speakers avoid confusion, you understand.)

:-)

-- 
Regards,
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:11:55 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote:

> > While I'm loathe to use words like underhanded, ...  
> 
> <pedant>
> 	Not "loathe" here but "loath" or even "loth".
> </pedant>

Ouch!


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Mac screen message: "Like, dude, something went wrong."

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 4:16 PM, Steven J. Long
<slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 11:37:53PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> initramfs is the new /, for varying values of new since most distros have
>> been doing it that way for well over a decade.
>
> Only it's not, since you're responsible for keeping it in sync with the main
> system. And for making sure it has everything you need. And hoping they don't
> change incompatibly between root and initramfs.

You have ALWAYS been responsible for keeping / in sync with /usr. ALWAYS.
Putting / out of sync with /usr will almost definitely result in breakage for
practically every use case where / and /usr have been separated. You cannot
reliably upgrade one without the other. If anything, it's easier to keep an init
thingy in sync with /usr than to keep / in sync with /usr because our
init thingies
have automated tools for calculating what to put in them. / does not, and the
problem of deciding what goes there is harder than with an init thingy.

Likewise, updating / without updating the init thingy, _if you dont know what
you're doing_ is a recipe for trouble.

Thus the analogy stands.

-- 
This email is:    [ ] actionable   [x] fyi        [ ] social
Response needed:  [ ] yes          [x] up to you  [ ] no
Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [ ] soon       [x] none

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 11.10.2013 10:28, schrieb Steven J. Long:
> On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 06:35:58PM +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>>> wrong analogy and it goes down from here. Really.
>>> Ohh, but they are inspired on YOUR analogy, so guess how wrong yours was.
>> your trolling is weak. And since I never saw anything worth reading
>> posted by you, you are very close to plonk territory right now.
> If his analogies are weak, that's deliberate: to show that your analogy is just
> as weak. Irrespective of why /usr was first added, or that it was in fact what
> /home now is, it's proven useful in many contexts. That you don't accept that,
> won't convince anyone who's lived that truth. All you'll do is argue in circles
> about irrelevance.
>  
>>> The setup of a separate /usr on a networked system was used in amongst
>>> other places a few swedish universities.
>> seperate /usr on network has been used in a lot of places. So what? Does
>> that prove anything?
>> Nope, it doesn't.
> Er quite obviously it proves that a separate /usr can be useful. In fact so
> much so that all the benefits of the above setup are claimed by that god-awful
> "why split usr is broken because we are dumbasses who got kicked out of the
> kernel and think that userspace doesn't need stability" post, as if they never
> existed before, and could not exist without a rootfs/usr merge.
>  
>> Seriously, /var is a good candidate for a seperate partition. /usr is not.
> They both are. Not very convincing is it?
> Seriously, if you don't see the need for one, good for you. Just stop telling
> us what to think, will you?
>
>>>>>> too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.
>>>>> Too bad separate /usr is much older than initramfs.
>>>> too bad that initramfs and initrd are pretty good solutions to the
>>>> problem of hidden breakage caused by seperate /usr.
>>>> If you are smart enough to setup an nfs server, I suppose you are smart
>>>> enough to run dracut/genkernel&co.
>>> If you are smart enough to run "dracut/genkernel&co" I suppose you are
>>> smart enough to see the wrongness of your initial statement "too bad
>>> POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS."
>> too bad I am right and you are and idiot.
>>
>> Originally, the name "POSIX" referred to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, released
>> in 1988. The family of POSIX standards is formally designated as IEEE
>> 1003 and the international standard name is ISO/IEC 9945.
>> The standards, formerly known as IEEE-IX, emerged from a project that
>> began circa 1985. Richard Stallman suggested the name POSIX to the IEEE.
>> The committee found it more easily pronounceable and memorable, so it
>> adopted it
>>
>> That is from wikipedia.
>>
>> 1985/1988. When were LSB/FHS created again?
>>
>> FHS in 1994. Hm....
> You really are obtuse. You should try to consider what *point* the other person
> is trying to make before you mouth off with "superior knowledge" that completely
> misses it.
>
>> *plonk*
> ditto. AFAIC you're the one who pulled insults out, when in fact you were
> *completely* missing the point.
>
> Bravo. 
>
you know, I just reread this subthread and the other crap you just
posted today.

Complaining, insulting, being 'obtuse' - that describes you very well.
Or not reading at all.

Very well, I can live without your emails. Really, I can.

[gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[walt]

On 10/11/2013 01:42 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:

> I don't like systemd,

Sorry if my memory is failing (it surely is) but I don't recall any
explanation from you describing your dissatisfaction with systemd.

The three happiest months of my life were spent as a student in London
in the summer of 1974, where I frequently heard the phrase "I should have
thought that you...".

Only much later did I discover that such a benign phrase conveys the most
severe form of British disapproval :(

With belated apologies to my many kind Brit friends from 1974, I ask you
to tell us WTF you dislike systemd, and use language that us Yanks can
fscking unnerstand, got it, punk?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Daniel Campbell]

On 10/11/2013 09:21 PM, walt wrote:
> On 10/11/2013 01:42 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> 
>> I don't like systemd,
> 
> Sorry if my memory is failing (it surely is) but I don't recall any
> explanation from you describing your dissatisfaction with systemd.
> 
> The three happiest months of my life were spent as a student in London
> in the summer of 1974, where I frequently heard the phrase "I should have
> thought that you...".
> 
> Only much later did I discover that such a benign phrase conveys the most
> severe form of British disapproval :(
> 
> With belated apologies to my many kind Brit friends from 1974, I ask you
> to tell us WTF you dislike systemd, and use language that us Yanks can
> fscking unnerstand, got it, punk?
> 
> 
What do his personal opinions regarding systemd have to do with separate
/ and /usr? It's just another one of many, many applications that
migrated to /usr and added more inertia to de facto practice.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 19:21:05 -0700, walt wrote:

> On 10/11/2013 01:42 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> 
> > I don't like systemd,
> 
> Sorry if my memory is failing (it surely is) but I don't recall any
> explanation from you describing your dissatisfaction with systemd.

It was never germane to the conversation. I only mentioned it here to
make it clear that I am not a systemd or Poettering apologist.

I don't like the idea of such a complex and pervasive init process. Do
one thing and do it well is the long-standing Unix mantra, and it's been
long-standing for good reason. This is particularly applicable to the
most critical process on the system, process 1.

I'm also uncomfortable with the close ties between systemd and GNOME, not
that  have anything against the GNOME people but init should be
independently controlled. Red Hat contribute more to the kernel than
anyone else (12.5% IIRC) but they don't control its development.

I have tried systemd on a minimal VM and it did boot very quickly, but
that's not a real concern for me. The only system I reboot with any
regularity is my laptop, and that boots equally quickly because it has an
SSD.

> With belated apologies to my many kind Brit friends from 1974, I ask you
> to tell us WTF you dislike systemd, and use language that us Yanks can
> fscking unnerstand, got it, punk?

OMG IT'S NOT AWESOME!


-- 
Neil Bothwick

New sig wanted good price paid.

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[gentoo-user] Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-10-02 4:21 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> On 2013-10-02 2:24 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
>> Ok, thanks much guys... guess I'll go with Alans layout as it makes the
>> most sense to me:
>>
>> /var/portage
>> /var/distfiles
>> /var/packages
>
> Actually, I think I like:
>
> /var/portage/tree
> /var/portage/distfiles
> /var/portage/packages

Question about permissions, and PORTDIR_OVERLAY...

I've now copied and rearranged /usr/portage, so that I have the above, 
and I also copied /usr/local/portage to /var/portage/local.

But what are the permissions supposed to be/need to be for each of these?

Currently, they are:

/var/portage/tree (portage:portage, 755)
/var/portage/distfiles (root:portage, 775)
/var/portage/packages (portage:portage, 700)
/var/portage/local (root:root, 755)

So, why are the owners and perms not the same for all of these?

Or, more importantly, should I change any of them, and if so, to what?

Thanks

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-12-04 10:05 AM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> I've now copied and rearranged /usr/portage, so that I have the above,
> and I also copied /usr/local/portage to /var/portage/local.

And just ran eix-update for the first time since moving portage, and got 
a couple of strange references to the old locations...

First, at the beginning of the main sync (but after layman finished 
syncing), there was a reference to 'duplicate references to...'

Do I need to re-run layman now to point it to the new repo locations?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:43:54 -0500, Tanstaafl wrote:

> Do I need to re-run layman now to point it to the new repo locations?

You need to edit /etc/layman/layman.cfg to change the storage setting.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

With free advice you often get what you pay for.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-12-04 5:44 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:43:54 -0500, Tanstaafl wrote:
>
>> Do I need to re-run layman now to point it to the new repo locations?
>
> You need to edit /etc/layman/layman.cfg to change the storage setting.

Thanks Neil... I actually did that, but I also stupidly copy/pasted the 
new PORTDIR_OVERLAY line, and left them BOTH in make.conf...

Duh...

Once I commented out the old one, eix-sync worked fine with no errors...

Then I mv'd the old /usr/portage dir, did an emerge -pvuDN world, and 
discovered one more thing that must be done after moving PORTDIR...

You must reset your profile link, which is broken after mv'ing the old 
/usr/portage dir.

eselect profile set 1 (in my case)

Thanks to all for helping me with this and prepping for merging /usr 
back into / (this was part of that, to reduce the amount of stuff to 
copy, and to give me a little more free space on / after the move).

Looking forward to getting this done and moving on with my life,,, ;)