Re: [gentoo-user] Re: LVM, /usr and really really bad thoughts.

["Canek Peláez Valdés" <caneko@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 1:31 AM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
>
> On Mar 13, 2012 2:19 PM, "Alan McKinnon" <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:54:58 +0700
>> Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
>>
>> > > The idea of trying to launch udevd and initialize devices without
>> > > the software, installed in /usr, which is required by those devices
>> > > is a configuration that causes problems in many real-world,
>> > > practical situations.
>> > >
>> > > The requirement of having /usr on the same partition as / is also a
>> > > configuration that causes problems in many real-world, practical
>> > > situations.
>> > >
>> >
>> > I quite often read about this, and after some thinking, I have to
>> > ask: why?
>> >
>>
>> I've also thought about this and I also want to ask why?
>>
>> I stopped using a separate /usr on my workstations a long time ago when
>> I realized it was pointless. The days of 5M hard disks when the entire
>> OS didn't fit on one are long gone. The days of my software going tits
>> up at the drop of a hat requiring a minimal repair environment to fix
>> it at boot are also long gone (my desk is littered with LiveCDs and
>> bootable flash drives).
>>
>> So I can't find a single good reason why /usr *must* be separate and my
>> workstations are the only machines that will ever have hotplug booting
>> issues.
>>
>> I'm even considering changing the install standards for the company
>> servers to dispense with separate /usr, as long as there are safeguards
>> against clowns who don't read INSTALL files and happily
>> accept /usr/local/<package>/var as a storage area.
>>
>
> I just did some more thinking, and *maybe* the reason is to prevent
> something under /usr (src and share comes to mind) from growing too big and
> messes up the root filesystem.
>
> Place the offenders on a separate partition, then mount them under /usr, and
> all should be well...

The always used example is to have /usr shared as a read only NFS
partition among several workstations. In corporate environments it is
certainly used this way (or at least it was when I worked, and the way
I used it in my office seven or eight years ago).

Of course, for a normal desktop user, a separate /usr is basically useless.

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