Re: [gentoo-user] some of the stuff in /usr that's become a problem

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On 01/10/2013 10:30, Greg Woodbury wrote:
> All that is required is that the programs and libraries necessary to
> locate and mount root and then to find and mount other filesystems be in
> root.


Please provide the full and complete list of all code on all Gentoo
systems that are required in all supported configurations to support
that end. Keep in mind you are dealing with an open-ended problem.

Then provide patches to all ebuilds that will move said code to /

Then provide a means by which any new code in the future can be detected
to fall into this same category and alert the develops before too much
breakage happens.

Those three sentences above are not facetious. That is exactly what you
are expecting the Gentoo maintainers to do. I don't think you grasp the
full extent of this problem on modern Linux systems, it is not just a
case of doing what you have to do to mount all other filesystems, it's a
case of finding everything the must happen to do that and enforcing that
none of it creeps into /usr. Which includes all manner of things users
might validly want to so, most of it that you and I have never thought of.

Recall how Unix treats everything as a file and lets you pipe, tee and
redirect data in wonderful ways to produce output not envisaged by tool
designers?

The start-up sequence on modern Linuxes is starting to lean heavily in
an analogous direction. The simple days of 1982 when everything in early
boot was predictable are long gone.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com