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On Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:49:53 -0600 |
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Bruce Hill <daddy@×××××××××××××××××××××.com> wrote: |
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> On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 05:10:43PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> > |
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> > That was the original reason for having / and /usr separate, and it |
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> > dates back to the early 70s. The other reason that stems from that |
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> > time period is the size of disks we had back then - they were tiny |
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> > and often a minimal / was all that could really fit on the primary |
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> > system drive. |
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> > |
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> > Gradually over time this setup became the norm and people started to |
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> > depend on it, and more importantly, started to believe it was |
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> > important to retain it. It's their right to believe that. |
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> > |
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> > Recently I decided to measure if I still needed a separate /usr (I |
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> > was a long time advocate of retaining it). I'm in the lucky |
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> > position of having ~200 Linux machines, all distinctly different, |
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> > at my disposal, so I trawled through memory and incident logs |
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> > looking for cases where a separate /usr was crucial to recovery |
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> > after any form of error. To my surprise, I found none at all and |
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> > those logs go back 5 years. |
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> > |
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> > So I got to change my mind (not something I do very often I admit) |
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> > and concluded that separate base and user systems (/ and /usr) was |
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> > no longer something I needed to do - the "system" - disks, hardware |
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> > and the software on the disks - was very reliable, and what I |
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> > really needed was ability to boot from USB rescue disks. I did |
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> > find, not unsurprisingly, that I also really needed /usr/local on a |
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> > separate partition but that's because of how we install our |
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> > in-house software here, plus our backup policies. |
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> > |
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> > It also goes without saying that these days we |
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> > need /home, /var, /var/log and /tmp to all be on their own |
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> > filesystem, and we need that more than ever. |
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> > |
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> > I thought I should just toss that in the ring for people who are |
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> > undecided where they stand on the debate of separate / vs /usr. It's |
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> > what I found on our production, dev and staging servers, plus a |
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> > whole lot of people's personal workstations (sysadmins and devs). |
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> > The environment is a large corporate ISP that defies |
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> > categorization, we almost have at least one of every imaginable |
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> > use-case for running on Linux except something in the Top 100 |
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> > SuperComputer list. I reckon it's about as representative as I'm |
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> > ever gonna see. |
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> > |
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> > People are free to draw their own conclusions as always, and real |
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> > data is valuable in arriving at those conclusions. YMMV. |
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> |
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> Thanks for sharing your experience, and not just your emotions. One |
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> of my favorite quotes is, "A man with an experience is not subject to |
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> a man with an argument." |
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There's a few things I completely left out - /usr/portage |
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and /usr/distfiles - I forgot all about those. |
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For years now I manually move those to /var as I consider /usr to |
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be mostly read-only, plus the portage tree and distfiles are hungry. |
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They form two cases where separate mounts are highly desirable. |
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The other thing I didn't comment on is /usr mounted ro over NFS. The |
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only current valid case I've heard of is school and university labs, |
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and one of those is the only one I've ever seen. Not something I ever |
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work with to be honest. I would like to know how prevalent /usr as an |
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NFS mount is in the world out there. |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan.mckinnon@×××××.com |