1 |
William Hubbs wrote: |
2 |
> Hey all, |
3 |
> |
4 |
> I have been advised to bring this topic back to the list before taking |
5 |
> any action, so here it is. |
6 |
> |
7 |
> First, I need to clarify what I'm *NOT* talking about. |
8 |
> |
9 |
> This discussion has nothing to do with whether or not you have the |
10 |
> split-usr use flag turned on; all of us officially have that on because |
11 |
> /bin, /lib* and /sbin are directories in the official Gentoo setup. In |
12 |
> other words, I am *not* talking about forcing the /usr merge. |
13 |
> |
14 |
> Unfortunately, the concept of separate usr has gotten wrapped up in the |
15 |
> split-usr use flag and doesn't have to be. For the record, I mean something |
16 |
> very specific when I say "separate usr". I am talking about the situation |
17 |
> where /usr is a mount point separate from /, so in this thread, let's stick |
18 |
> to "separate usr" for that situation. I am *not* even saying that using |
19 |
> separate usr is wrong or unsupported. You can even run separate usr with |
20 |
> split-usr turned off if you would like to do so. |
21 |
> |
22 |
> Now for the use case I want to talk about, and that is using separate |
23 |
> /usr without using an initramfs to boot your system and pre-mount /usr. |
24 |
> |
25 |
> If you do this, many things are broken, and this is why the binary |
26 |
> distros all use an initramfs if you do this. This configuration is also |
27 |
> unsupported officially in Gentoo [1] [2], and it is not shown as the |
28 |
> example setup in our handbook. |
29 |
> |
30 |
> I want to hear from people who have / and /usr on separate partitions |
31 |
> and who are not using an initramfs. |
32 |
> |
33 |
> If you are in this group, I have a very specific question. Why aren't |
34 |
> you using an initramfs? |
35 |
> |
36 |
> Thanks, |
37 |
> |
38 |
> William |
39 |
> |
40 |
> [1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20130924-summary.txt |
41 |
> [2] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/data/gentoo-news.git/commit/?id=a79dd69b0cca439bc0c483c9193c79e0554819d0 |
42 |
|
43 |
|
44 |
I have a separate /usr among others and always have. The reason I do |
45 |
that, /boot and / are normal partitions but everything else is LVM. I |
46 |
can adjust the size of everything BUT /boot and /. At the time I did |
47 |
that, the init thingy was not needed if I recall correctly. I might |
48 |
add, I've had to grow /usr and /var a couple times. Before LVM, it |
49 |
meant copying over to another drive, repartitioning and then restoring |
50 |
to the old drive. Time consuming and one wrong command could ruin a |
51 |
install. |
52 |
|
53 |
While I have a init thingy, I do not like it. I've had a couple |
54 |
failures already with those things. Luckily I keep older kernels and |
55 |
such for that. If I had my wish, I would not need a init thingy, ever. |
56 |
It's just one more thing that can cause problems. There's already more |
57 |
than enough things that can break. While I understand the problem comes |
58 |
from upstream, I still think it sucks. It's easy enough to have a |
59 |
unbootable kernel as it is. Adding another layer for booting to fail |
60 |
should be avoided. BTW, I use dracut. I tried to build it other ways |
61 |
but couldn't get it to work. Bad thing is, when one fails even built |
62 |
with dracut, I have no clue how it works really so no idea how to fix |
63 |
other than using a older kernel or just rerunning dracut and hoping for |
64 |
the best. |
65 |
|
66 |
I'm also not looking forward to the other situation you mentioned |
67 |
either. At some point, having separate partitions won't be easy with or |
68 |
without a init thingy. I can't easily resize / without reworking the |
69 |
whole thing. |
70 |
|
71 |
Just my point of view on why I don't like the thing and wish I didn't |
72 |
have to have one. |
73 |
|
74 |
Dale |
75 |
|
76 |
:-) :-) |