Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: "K. Mike Bradley" <kmb@××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: RE: [gentoo-user] Newbie question re: /usr
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:21
Message-Id: 001f01c6688b$614b1050$0300a8c0@samantha
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Newbie question re: /usr by Richard Fish
1 Thank you Richard.
2 That answers my question very well.
3
4
5
6
7 -----Original Message-----
8 From: richard.j.fish@×××××.com [mailto:richard.j.fish@×××××.com] On Behalf
9 Of Richard Fish
10 Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 12:14 PM
11 To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
12 Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Newbie question re: /usr
13
14 On 4/25/06, K. Mike Bradley <kmb@××××××××.com> wrote:
15 > I wonder if anyone can explain why /usr was created?
16
17 The idea is that / can be a very small partition and contains
18 everything necessary to boot and administer the system, and /usr can
19 be a separate partition or logical volume. Some advantages to this
20 setup are:
21
22 1. If the partition containing /usr is corrupted, the system will
23 still boot, and you have enough tools (fdisk, mkfs, tar, cpio, etc) to
24 repair and restore it.
25
26 2. /usr can be on a network server.
27
28 3. On the network server, exporting /usr presents no risk to /. Even
29 if /usr is filled up, the server will continue to function and can
30 still be administered.
31
32 This is why:
33
34 - command interpreters like bash, ash, etc go in /bin
35 - network clients and remote shells (ssh, telnet, etc) go in /usr/bin
36 - network, filesystem, and disk utilities go in /bin
37 - large text editors (emacs, etc) go in /usr/bin
38 - small text editors (vi, vim) go in /bin
39 - X, KDE, Gnome, et al are in /usr
40 - and so on...
41
42 That said, you wll find a lot of desktop systems (mine included) that
43 have / and /usr on the same filesystem. It's a matter of taste and
44 what you will be using the system for whether you should make /usr a
45 separate filesystem or not.
46
47 -Richard
48
49 --
50 gentoo-user@g.o mailing list
51
52
53 --
54 gentoo-user@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Newbie question re: /usr Richard Fish <bigfish@××××××××××.org>