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

[Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>]

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?
>