Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: locations of binaries and separate /usr

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Kent Fredric <kentfredric@×××××.com> wrote:
> Given that these tools are being moved to /usr and/or duplicated to in
> initrd , what is the point of a root filesystem anyway now? Just to
> mount other things on? Just to store /etc ?
>
> Or will /etc move to /usr too?

I'd recommend reading the fedora docs.  Their plan is to make /usr
read-only so that it contains all elements of the system managed by
the distro.  In the future rpm world config files exist half on /usr,
with overriding content in /etc (they don't have etc-update, and
etc-update isn't always perfect either).

But yes, the trend is towards making rootfs a bit more "virtual."

I can see some of the benefits of this arrangement, but by the time we
get that all worked out btrfs might be practical, and its subvolumes
actually solve many of the problems that lvm and many partitions are
used to solve today.  With btrfs you can make /usr a subvolume and
snapshot it at will, or set up a quota just for it.  That doesn't
cover all the use cases, but it does cover most of the desktop-y ones.

As far as repairing the system from rootfs goes - I think that greatly
depends on your circumstances.  If everything is on root anyway then
it is a moot point.  If everything isn't on root then your ability to
recover is inversely proportional to the complexity of your systems.
As others have pointed out, there is always something that you won't
have, and to be honest it isn't all that hard to just boot a liveDVD
that has everything and the kitchen sink available anyway.

Rich