Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Flexibility and robustness in the Linux organisim

[Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike)]

El 30/09/13 00:47, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
> Am 29.09.2013 18:41, schrieb Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike):
>> El 29/09/13 18:03, Volker Armin Hemmann escribió:
>>> Am 29.09.2013 17:12, schrieb Greg Woodbury:
>>>> On 09/29/2013 07:58 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> things were broken way before that. As much as I hate systemd, it is not
>>>>> the root cause of the problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> The problems were caused by people saying that seperate /usr was a good
>>>>> idea, so / would not fill up and similar idiocies. The problems were
>>>>> caused by people saying that lvm is a good idea - for desktops. Those
>>>>> people who are fighting against the kernel auto assembling raids are to
>>>>> blame too.
>>>>>
>>>>> Systemd is just another point in a very long list.
>>>>>
>>>> The usr filesystem was separate from root from the very early days of
>>>> UNIX.  Disks were *tiny* (compared to today) and spreading certain
>>>> things across separate spindles provided major benefits. Certainly,
>>>> the original need to require a separate usr went away fairly quickly,
>>>> but other benefits continued to encourage a seperation between root
>>>> and usr.
>>>>
>>> in the very early days /usr did not exist in the first space and was
>>> only created because someone added a harddisk.
>>>
>>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>> I'm going to show the lack of sense of this argument:
>> in the very early days linux did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone got a 386.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
> wrong analogy and it goes down from here. Really.
Ohh, but they are inspired on YOUR analogy, so guess how wrong yours was.
>> in the very early days GNU did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone jammed a printer.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> in the very early days Gentoo did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone added a processor.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> in the very early days hardening did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone added security.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> in the very early days Gnome did not exist in the first space and was
>> only created because someone got a graphics card.
>>
>> Not really a good reason to keep it around.
>>
>> I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the pattern there.
>>
>> Ohh and BTW, /usr was not just added because someone added a harddrive,
>> in most cases it was used to allow machines contain a very small system
>> on / which was enough to just boot and mount a networked system (/usr)
>> containing most of the software. This allowed for cheaper deployment of
>> machines since the hard drive could be smaller as it wouldn't need to
>> have all the data locally. Yeah, if this sounds familiar is because this
>> was later moved to initramfs.
> no, network'ed file systems came a lot later.
> Initially /usr was added because one harddisk was full. Really, that is
> the whole reason for its (broken) existance.
Please provide some reference about "Initially /usr was added because
one harddisk was full." without it your statement is moot to me.

The setup of a separate /usr on a networked system was used in amongst
other places a few swedish universities.
>>>> The var filesystem was for variable system data, and was never
>>>> terribly big and its inclusion on the root volume happened.  The home
>>>> filesystem  became traditionally separate because data expands to fill
>>>> all availab;e space, and users collect *things*
>>> and a seperate /home does not create any problems.
>>> /var is much more prone to accidentally fill up then /usr ever was.
>> You are jst getting it wrong, /var was kept locally as the data there
>> was supposed to change from machine to machine.
> no, you just don't understand what I wrote.
> People told other people to keep /usr seperate so / may not fill up by
> accident.
>
> That advise always was murky at best. Outright stupid is a good
> description too.
>
> /usr is not prone to much changes. So if your / fits the contents of
> /usr just fine, there is pretty much no risk.
> /var on the other hand tends to explode - but a lot of people never got
> told to put /var on a seperate disk.
>
> If you ever realized that a tens of gigabyte logfile just made your box
> unbootable, you learnt a lot that day.
That's why you move /var/log, not /var
>>>> Networking made it possible to have home entirely off system, and
>>>> diskless worstations ruled for a while as well.
>>>>
>>>> By the time Linux came along, it had become common for boot volumes to
>>>> not be mounted during normal system operation, but the three
>>>> filesystem layout was common and workable.  As Linux continued to be
>>>> like Topsy (she jest growed!) fragmentation started to occur as
>>>> "distributions" arose.  The "balkanization" of Linux distributions
>>>> became a real concern to some and standardization offorts were
>>>> encouraged.
>>>>
>>>> The "File System Standard" (FSS) was renamed to the Filesystem
>>>> Hierarch Standard (FHS) and it was strongly based on the UNIX System V
>>>> definitions (which called for seperation of usr and root.) POSIX added
>>>> more layers and attempted to bring in the various BSD flavors.
>>>>
>>>> THe LSB (Linux Standards Base) effort was conceived as supersceeding
>>>> all the other efforts, and FHS was folded into the LSB definition. Yet
>>>> even then a separate root and usr distinction survived.  Then things
>>>> started falling apart again - POSIX rose like a phoenix and even the
>>>> Windows/wintel environment could claim POSIX compliant behavior. The
>>>> fall of the LSB effort really became evident when the FHS was gutted
>>>> and certain major players decided to ignore the LSB recommendations.
>>> too bad POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS.
>> Too bad separate /usr is much older than initramfs.
> too bad that initramfs and initrd are pretty good solutions to the
> problem of hidden breakage caused by seperate /usr.
> If you are smart enough to setup an nfs server, I suppose you are smart
> enough to run dracut/genkernel&co.
If you are smart enough to run "dracut/genkernel&co" I suppose you are
smart enough to see the wrongness of your initial statement "too bad
POSIX is much older than LSB or FHS."
>>>> As a result, the GNOME Alliance has shattered.  The main GNOME army
>>>> marches on its unfathomable path, and various large chunks have broke
>>>> off in their own directions (e.g. Cinnamon and Mate) seeking to remain
>>>> flexible and not incompatible with the KDE and other lesser DE folks.
>>>>
>>>> It is truly layable at the feet of the GNOME folks, the breakage of
>>>> the root and usr filesystem separability is all derived from the GNOME
>>>> camp.
>>>> These changes may not, in fact, be deliberate or intended to "defeat"
>>>> Microsoft, but Ockham's Razor cuts and intentionality is the simpler
>>>> explanation.
>>> that gnome is very hostile when it comes to KDE or choice is not news.
>>> And their dependency on systemd is just the usual madness. But they are
>>> not to blame for seperate /usr and the breakage it causes.
>> True, fingers here should be pointed into another direction like systemd.
> systemd is not the first package to break.
udev is a part of systemd
>>>> To come back to the thesis: robustness and flexibility are required
>>>> for good "health" and we are witnessing a dangerous challenge.
>>> what? that you need an initrd? That is so bad?
>> It may be, there is people which may not have enough free space ob /boot
>> for example.
> and now we are deeply into kidding territory. How small is that boot? 3mb?
Maybe, I know of Gentoo users running on really old Pentium IIs with
SCSI disks, so it wouldn't come as a surprise.
>>> Are you kidding me?
>> I doubt it, instead you seem to be just trolling, see your own arguments
> well, I haven't seen any arguments from you so far. So who is the troll
> again?
You have kindly disregarded them... like trolls tend to do,
>>>> [PS} If anybody cares, I was trained in both Computer Science and
>>>> Biological Science.  and I can expand on the parallels if so desired.
>>>>
>>> no thank you. But if I might add one: you are making an elephant out of
>>> a gnat.
>> To me it looks like youu are making a gnat out of an elephant.
> what is the elephant? Running an extra command on kernel updates?
Requiring users to repartition systems with the downtime that carries,
for example.