Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Daniel Campbell <lists@××××××××.us>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] systemd installation location
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 01:50:27
Message-Id: 5248D8D6.8040901@sporkbox.us
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] systemd installation location by Mark David Dumlao
1 On 09/29/2013 08:40 PM, Mark David Dumlao wrote:
2 > On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Daniel Campbell <lists@××××××××.us> wrote:
3 >> I'm not affected by anything regarding the /usr switch, but I'd like
4 >> to have a good talk with the first person who decided a
5 >> system-critical binary belonged in /usr instead of /bin or /sbin.
6 >> They've created a mess for every distro and any project that depends
7 >> on their work.
8 >
9 > (sorry for the previous post, accidentally clicked somewhere onscreen)
10 >
11 > As I've pointed out before:
12 > 1) "system-critical" is actually dependent on the system. A system dependent
13 > on an smb share will find smbmount system critical. One dependent on
14 > zfs-fuse will find fuse system critical. With the advent of fuse,
15 > some filesystem
16 > that depends on an arbitrary user program will find that system-critical.
17 > While this works for for 99.(99?)% of user systems out there, FHS
18 > is supposed
19 > to be targetting all of them, and so it fails in principle in that respect.
20 > I remember making a lengthy thread on this mailing list challenging how FHS
21 > defined this and it appeared that nobody could make a defense.
22 > 2) the reality is, it's not just binaries even. There are some things
23 > that binaries
24 > depend on, that in theory should be in /. For example, the hwid database, or
25 > libraries. Libraries make for a complex problem, because /usr is supposed to
26 > be network-sharable. Any libraries your programs depend on can't simply just
27 > be pushed to /, because then there'd be the chance that the
28 > programs and their
29 > libraries were not in sync.
30 Libraries were one of my concerns when I was replying. I thought to
31 myself, "Well damn, won't shared libraries make this even more
32 difficult?" Perhaps it's a case for static-linked core binaries. :)
33
34 Anyway, I'm not in favor of FHS _per se_, but it sounds pretty
35 reasonable to have some semblance of order among where different parts
36 of a system go. Shoving everything into /usr and symlinking everything
37 else seems like a stop-gap or good-enough solution that came about due
38 to ignoring the existing standard (FHS) and refusing to try to change
39 it. I could be wrong, though. My point is I'm not dogmatic about it; I
40 just think that if the FOSS community were willing, a better solution
41 could be crafted.
42 >
43 > I made a handful of criticisms to FHS in that thread before, and nobody was
44 > able to mount a suitable defense. The point being, even in principle, separating
45 > / and /usr is flaky design at best. That we just so happened to
46 > accumulate a number
47 > of packages that are historically installed to /usr is a consequence
48 > of that. It's not
49 > even necessarily the fault of the upstream developer, who's not
50 > supposed to care so
51 > much which PREFIX they install to, or the distro packager, who can't yet predict
52 > how the user will tailor their system.
53 >
54 > If you were in the shoes of the ebuild packagers, you would be hard-pressed to
55 > predict which packages belong in the / PREFIX and which ones in /usr PREFIX,
56 > 100 times out of 100. But you need 100 times out of 100 or you'll get
57 > people whining
58 > that they can't boot or whining that they need to do some migration. That's
59 > why / and /usr separation is broken.
60 >
61 I agree, but perhaps the / and /usr separation is a symptom of a greater
62 problem instead of being the problem in and of itself. Like Inception,
63 maybe we need to go further. :P

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] systemd installation location Mark David Dumlao <madumlao@×××××.com>