Re: [gentoo-dev] Opinion against /usr merge

[Matthew Marlowe]

> It would be nice if a sensible structure could be proposed and
> agreed by ALL Linux distributions (coordinated with BSD).
>

+1

If a new file system standard is required, my preferences based on a
history of what is worked and changed over the last 20-30 years would
be:

- OK with requiring / and /usr on the same FS.  This has become common
practice with virtualization and small system deployments, and I
haven't seen any compelling advantage for keeping separate on larger
boxes.
- NOT OK with limitation on allowing /var, /opt, /home, or any other
common server mount points to require use of initramfs/initrd.  There
is enough disagreement as to the reliability and ease of maintenance
of initramfs/initrd that it should not be needed for common server
deployments.
- It would be nice if the rootfs used a snapshot based filesystem and
if the bootloader was intelligent enough to easily allow admins to
boot to older snapshots as an expectation for any standard modern unix
system.
- Ideally, server motherboards would come with flash based storage
where sysadmins could install rescue environments as part of a normal
unix install, and that the boot loader or bios would be smart enough
to provide the option to boot from it automatically whenever a normal
boot failed.
- NOT OK with removing the distinction between user and system
binaries.  Essential binaries required to boot and troubleshoot system
problems should be located separately from user binaries.  Security
sensitive or paranoid admins should be able to make the system binary
path read-only or completely remove the user binary directory from
roots PATH if they so wish.
- OK with merging / and /usr, but in that case...why not just move
everything in /usr to /...but limit /sbin to system binaries and /bin
to user ones?  This would be horrible for migrations though and
possibly confuse many scripts.
- NOT OK with making systemd the default init system anytime in the
next few years, it is way too immature and like most major system
software changes...probably will take much longer before it really has
the standing to propose being a new standard.
- What other elements can new filesystems like btrfs offer that should
be considered?  ext3/ext4 has worked great with the older
standards...but it essentially mimicked the capabilities of older
file-systems that the original unix standards were based on.  Btrfs
might change our expectations.  I'm assuming that btrfs will be the
standard production fs in a few years.