| 1 |
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote: |
| 2 |
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:02:54 +0800 |
| 3 |
> Mark David Dumlao <madumlao@×××××.com> wrote: |
| 4 |
> |
| 5 |
>> > That was the original reason for having / and /usr separate, and it |
| 6 |
>> > dates back to the early 70s. The other reason that stems from that |
| 7 |
>> > time period is the size of disks we had back then - they were tiny |
| 8 |
>> > and often a minimal / was all that could really fit on the primary |
| 9 |
>> > system drive. |
| 10 |
>> |
| 11 |
>> I'm sorry, but I just can't let this one go. The reasons are |
| 12 |
>> backwards. The limitation in free space was the original reason [1] |
| 13 |
>> why / and /usr were separated. In fact, /usr was supposed to serve the |
| 14 |
>> same purpose as /home - it was originally a directory for users. It's |
| 15 |
>> only a quirk of history that served to keep most of the binaries in |
| 16 |
>> /usr when the home directories were moved elsewhere to /home. |
| 17 |
>> |
| 18 |
>> Long story short, Unix, too, has its share of old farts that are |
| 19 |
>> unwilling to embrace change at anything faster than a glacier's pace. |
| 20 |
>> Just ask the Plan 9 folks. |
| 21 |
>> |
| 22 |
>> [1] |
| 23 |
>> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html |
| 24 |
> |
| 25 |
> Well fair enough. This stuff is becoming more myth than fact as less |
| 26 |
> and less people are around to remember how it really went. There may |
| 27 |
> even have been to-ing and fro-ing moving bits around till Ken and |
| 28 |
> Dennis settled on the eventual outcome in that post. |
| 29 |
> |
| 30 |
> Either way, we still agree. A separate /usr is, *for the most part*, a |
| 31 |
> tradition applied without much understanding of the reason (most |
| 32 |
> traditions are exactly like this). Most people do not actually need |
| 33 |
> it. |
| 34 |
|
| 35 |
The sweet irony here is that Poettering - the cause for all this mess |
| 36 |
- likely understood the logistics and rationale of the / and /usr |
| 37 |
split better than most of his detractors - I'm pretty sure I landed on |
| 38 |
that link by starting from one of his systemd tutorial pages, though I |
| 39 |
can't exactly remember which one. Thankfully, I've never had to |
| 40 |
maintain systems whose disks were small and low performing enough that |
| 41 |
it actually mattered to separate / from /usr. |
| 42 |
-- |
| 43 |
This email is: [ ] actionable [ ] fyi [x] social |
| 44 |
Response needed: [ ] yes [x] up to you [ ] no |
| 45 |
Time-sensitive: [ ] immediate [ ] soon [x] none |
Archives