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Auteur: Irrwahn
Datum:  
Aan: dng
Onderwerp: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian
On Tue, 05 Jan 2016 18:06:08 +0000, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
> Didier Kryn <kryn@???> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>>>> I've read, from a guy who followed the story,that it was originally
>>>> split because the first disk was too
>>>> small.
>
> [...]
>
>>     Good find Rainer. But I don't fully understand what you mean by:
>>> Keep the stuff needed by everyone (and the swap space) on the fast disk
>>> and use the slower one for 'individual users files'.

>>
>> Do you mean the applications in /usr/bin aren't used by everyone?
>> Or they don't deserve to be launched quickly?
>
> The main use of the original /usr was "store user home directories", ie,
> files users were working with, including "less universally useful
> programs".
>

[...]
> There's also a "Notes for a UNIX talk ca 1972". Unfortunately, I don't
> have a local copy of that, it's also not part of Landley's "sources" and
> what used to be "Dennis Ritchie's homepage" is - at best -
> intermittently accessible nowadays but I this 'UNIX(*) talk' refers to
> the 11/45 installations and talks about "a fast, fixed-head system disk"
> and a "large, slower, moving head disk [mounted at /usr]"
>
>     where all the users' files are kept


You have a good memory. Only for the record, the exact quote reads:

    It is also possible for the directory hierarchy to be split 
    across several devices. Thus the system can store a directory, 
    and all [files] and directories lower than it in the hierarchy, 
    on a device other than the one on which the root is stored.


    In particular, in our own version of the system, there is a 
    directory "/usr" which contains all user's directories, and 
    which is stored on a relatively large, but slow moving head disk, 
    while the othe files are on the fast but small fixed-head disk. 


[Ref: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/notes.html]
The DMR page seems to be fairly stable, since he returned from main().

[...]

> [*] 'Typing patent applications' using ed and nroff, doubtlessly happy
>     with how user-friendly this system was when compared to a
>     typewriter. Is is clerks or programmers who degenerated so much
>     since then? :->>


Now, /that/ made my day, and in more than one way! :)