Hi guys,

I just noticed that some binaries moved from /usr/bin to /bin, and
thought I'd take this opportunity to gauge people's opinion about the
situation.

If I understand correctly /bin, /sbin and /lib are meant for files
that might be needed by /etc/rc.sysinit during early boot, before /usr
has been mounted. Everything else should go in the respective
counterparts in /usr.

At the moment we have a lot of binaries in /bin and /sbin that really
do not need to be there, and I suggest that we slowly start tidying
this up by moving them to /usr whenever we have the opportunity. We
can add compatibility symlinks, where needed, so nothing should break.

The pacakges with binaries outside of /usr are:

community/busybox
community/fgetty
community/systemd
community/tcsh
extra/cpio
extra/fuse
extra/grub2-common
extra/mt-st
extra/ntfs-3g
extra/pdksh
extra/zsh
core/bash
core/bzip2
core/coreutils
core/dash
core/ed
core/filesystem
core/gawk
core/grep
core/grub
core/gzip
core/inetutils
core/iputils
core/kbd
core/keyutils
core/less
core/mkinitcpio
core/module-init-tools
core/ncurses
core/net-tools
core/procps
core/sed
core/shadow
core/sysvinit
core/tar
core/util-linux

On 04/11/11 22:08, Tom Gundersen wrote:

core/bash
core/bzip2
core/coreutils
core/dash
core/ed
core/filesystem
core/gawk
core/grep
core/grub
core/gzip
core/inetutils
core/iputils
core/kbd
core/keyutils
core/less
core/mkinitcpio
core/module-init-tools
core/ncurses
core/net-tools
core/procps
core/sed
core/shadow
core/sysvinit
core/tar
core/util-linux


Almost all these packages have their binaries in /bin and /sbin covered
by the FHS.


Allan

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Allan McRae <allan@archlinux.org> wrote:
> On 04/11/11 22:08, Tom Gundersen wrote:
>>
>> core/bash

/bin/bashbug ?

>> core/bzip2
>> core/coreuils
>> core/dash

A symlink would probably do?

>> core/ed
>> core/filesystem
>> core/gawk
>> core/grep
>> core/grub

Not needed during boot.

>> core/gzip
>> core/inetutils
>> core/iputils
>> core/kbd
>> core/keyutils
>> core/less
>> core/mkinitcpio

Not needed during boot.

>> core/module-init-tools
>> core/ncurses
>> core/net-tools
>> core/procps
>> core/sed
>> core/shadow
>> core/sysvinit
>> core/tar
>> core/util-linux
>
> Almost all these packages have their binaries in /bin and /sbin covered by the FHS.

Most, but not all. Also, FHS specifically allows symlinks to the real
binaries, so referring to the FHS is not really an argument either
way.

There are some examples of binaries that really should not be there
though. I added some comments above, but the maintainers would
probably know better.

-t

[2011-11-04 13:52:34 +0100] Tom Gundersen:
> Most, but not all. Also, FHS specifically allows symlinks to the real
> binaries, so referring to the FHS is not really an argument either
> way.

I'm not sure I can follow your train of thoughts...

Why complicate the layout by adding symlinks?

Can we even boot without /usr anyhow?

--
Gaetan

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Gaetan Bisson <bisson@archlinux.org> wrote:
> [2011-11-04 13:52:34 +0100] Tom Gundersen:
>> Most, but not all. Also, FHS specifically allows symlinks to the real
>> binaries, so referring to the FHS is not really an argument either
>> way.
>
> I'm not sure I can follow your train of thoughts...
>
> Why complicate the layout by adding symlinks?
>
> Can we even boot without /usr anyhow?

Hmmm... I guess I was not clear.

My suggestion was simply for people to have a look at their packages
to see if they put any binaries outside /usr that have no reason to be
there.

We can not currently boot without /usr, so binaries needed to mount
/usr need to stay outside for the time being.

Maybe being in the FHS also is a good reason to stay outside.

It was not my intention to dictate what constitutes a good reason,
just to raise awareness as there are some things that clearly should
go away (what exactly they are I'll leave up to the individual
maintainers).

Above all though, I think we should be hesitant to add new stuff to
/bin or /sbin.

Cheers,

Tom