Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Anyone switched to eudev yet?

[Kevin Chadwick <ma1l1ists@yahoo.co.uk>]

> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:42 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > with redhat's push to move everything into /usr - why not stop right there and
> > move everything back into /?
> 
> I originally thought this way, but they actually reviewed the
> technical and historical merits for all the use cases and and found
> /usr to be superior. Straight out of the freedesktop wiki:
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge
> 
> 0) If / and /usr are kept separate, programs in /usr can't be updated
> independently of programs in /, because the libraries they depend on
> might break compatibility. If the binaries and libraries were *all* in
> /usr, then the entire system's binaries would always be consistent
> regardless of where /usr were sourced from (config files in /etc,
> however, would still break).

Complete rubbish. If something in / needs something it should be in /
if something is in / that isn't critical it shouldn't be there and
won't matter. In all other cases everything exists. If you want some
special feature that adds complexity to your early boot up stage
or single user then that should be an optional package that installs
into /. Similar to ssh enabled grub, it's optional.

> 2) If /usr were separated from /, then /usr could be mounted
> read-only, with / being mounted "normally". Which makes sense, as /
> does have bits that are meant to be read-write.

It certainly does not. There are packages that fix dhcp. I haven't ever
setup a system that needed to do that. Updates get temporary
controlled access.

> 3) Most software packagers write their binaries to a PREFIX defaulting
> to /usr/local, or /usr, as opposed to /. Determining which ones belong
> in / or /usr can sometimes be dependent on the distro and/or sysad.
> But since more of them default to /usr, if everything were in /usr
> it'd be a saner default.
> 

A concensus would be good. A right consensus is more likely to get a
consensus. This has no bearing on the matters at hand.

> (0) basically says that keeping them separate only works as intended
> if the both the sysad and the distro upstream work together for their
> shared /usr mount. In many cases, however, sysads have to do a lot of
> working around and careful planning to get /usr mounted remotely.
> (1), (2), and (3) provide advantages to mounting the binaries and
> libraries separately from the / filesystem, which mounting them as
> part of / does not provide.
> 

Rubbish you can mount the whole of / or /usr. If all you have is /usr
then if anything all you can mount is / but in fact you can mount any
folder anywhere due to unix-like systems being ace.

I wonder what percentage of Linux users believe you should have
one partition for everything due to easier installs. I know the number
will be increasing every day.

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________

'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)
_______________________________________________________________________