| 1 |
On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 11:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote: |
| 2 |
> |
| 3 |
> On Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:16:05 +0200 |
| 4 |
> nunojsilva@×××××××.pt (Nuno J. Silva) wrote: |
| 5 |
> |
| 6 |
> > On 2012-12-14, Mark Knecht wrote: |
| 7 |
> > |
| 8 |
> > > I guess the other question that's lurking here for me is why do you |
| 9 |
> > > have /usr on a separate partition? What's the usage model that |
| 10 |
> > > drives a person to do that? The most I've ever done is |
| 11 |
> > > move /usr/portage and /usr/src to other places. My /usr never has |
| 12 |
> > > all that much in it beyond those two directories, along with |
| 13 |
> > > maybe /usr/share. Would it not be easier for you in the long run to |
| 14 |
> > > move /usr back to / and not have to deal with this question at all? |
| 15 |
> > |
| 16 |
> > I may be wrong in this one, but the idea I have is that your regular |
| 17 |
> > applications (so, most of them) all lie under /usr/ -- /lib /bin and |
| 18 |
> > others are for essential system tools. |
| 19 |
> > |
| 20 |
> |
| 21 |
> That was the original reason for having / and /usr separate, and it |
| 22 |
> dates back to the early 70s. The other reason that stems from that time |
| 23 |
> period is the size of disks we had back then - they were tiny and often |
| 24 |
> a minimal / was all that could really fit on the primary system drive. |
| 25 |
|
| 26 |
I'm sorry, but I just can't let this one go. The reasons are |
| 27 |
backwards. The limitation in free space was the original reason [1] |
| 28 |
why / and /usr were separated. In fact, /usr was supposed to serve the |
| 29 |
same purpose as /home - it was originally a directory for users. It's |
| 30 |
only a quirk of history that served to keep most of the binaries in |
| 31 |
/usr when the home directories were moved elsewhere to /home. |
| 32 |
|
| 33 |
Long story short, Unix, too, has its share of old farts that are |
| 34 |
unwilling to embrace change at anything faster than a glacier's pace. |
| 35 |
Just ask the Plan 9 folks. |
| 36 |
|
| 37 |
[1] http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html |
| 38 |
|
| 39 |
-- |
| 40 |
This email is: [ ] actionable [x] fyi [ ] social |
| 41 |
Response needed: [ ] yes [ ] up to you [x] no |
| 42 |
Time-sensitive: [ ] immediate [ ] soon [x] none |
Archives