:: Re: [DNG] My thoughts on usr merge
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Autor: Didier Kryn
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A: dng
Assumpte: Re: [DNG] My thoughts on usr merge
Le 03/12/2023 à 08:30, Tomasz Torcz a écrit :
> On Sun, Dec 03, 2023 at 12:19:59AM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>> On Sat, Dec 02, 2023 at 11:13:16AM +0100, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
>>> Probably it can work when "/usr" is mounted in initramfs. But as I never
>>> found the utility to have a separate "/usr" on any of my own systems (and
>>> neither on any servers I administrated for my employer and their
>>> customers) as well has having had to deal with the outcome of very fine
>>> grained partitioning as in /usr being separate and too small.
>> I found a separate /usr convenient long ago.  My / partition,
>> which contained /usr, had run out of space and there were other partitios
>> beside it, so I couldn't just expand it.
>>
>> The simplist thing wasto put /usr elsewhere on the disk.
>    That actually the original reason from /usr split from 1971.
>
> #v+
> When the operating system grew too big to fit on the first RK05 disk
> pack (their root filesystem) they let it leak into the second one, which
> is where all the user home directories lived (which is why the mount was
> called /usr).  They replicated all the OS directories under there (/bin,
> /sbin, /lib, /tmp...) and wrote files to those new directories because
> their original disk was out of space.  When they got a third disk, they
> mounted it on /home and relocated all the user directories to there
> #v-
>
> https://www.pixelstech.net/article/1477109665-Unix-directory-hierarchy-history
>

    That's exactly why the current /usr merge is insane. It should be
the opposite: remove /usr and put all its subdirs back into /

    It make no sense to put the biggest part of the OS into /user, but
not all of it. /etc, /var and /boot for example have not been "merged"
(yet?).

    The merged OS, as it is managed by the package manager is a
consistent thing which includes files in /usr,  /etc,  /var, and /boot.
It does not bring any benefit in matter of resilience to disk failure to
break it down into various partitions. If any part has to be rebuilt,
then the whole has to. I can see only one reason to break it down:
daemons are writing continuously to /var, while all the rest is mostly
modified by the admin (essentially through the package manager);
therefore, /var deserves, when possible to be mounted on a device most
resilient to frequent writes.

    I'm ready to answer to any argument in favour of the existence of
/usr (today, not in 1971).

--     Didier