Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/hotplug/udev.git;a=commitdiff;h=12a362be5c1982f80dbfb75bda 070208a2c99cdf

Discuss.

--
ciao,
Marco

Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 at 01:43:34 +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/hotplug/udev.git;a=commitdiff;h=12a362be5c1982f80dbfb75bda 070208a2c99cdf
>
> Discuss.

As far as I can make out, their position is that a separate /usr is now only
supported if you mount it from the initrd - which to be honest seems a
reasonable way to keep existing separate-/usr systems working, without
defeating the "/ is small" justification for a separate /usr by gradually
migrating more and more of /usr into the root filesystem.

It doesn't really address the "/ as recovery system" use of a separate /usr
if your root filesystem can't boot unaided, but I'm far from convinced that
a separate /usr makes / significantly more reliable, and an entirely
separate installation (Debian Live on removable media, or a smaller Debian
install in a separate partition that isn't normally even mounted) makes an
even more reliable recovery system.

S


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Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

md@Linux.IT (Marco d'Itri) writes:

> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/hotplug/udev.git;a=commitdiff;h=12a362be5c1982f80dbfb75bda 070208a2c99cdf
>
> Discuss.
>
> --
> ciao,
> Marco

Give everyone at least 10 years headstart to migrate existing systems
away from having a seperate /usr partition and for people to stop making
a seperate /usr on new installs.

If you do this in Debian now a large portion of systems will self
destruct because /usr is a seperate partition and you will be tared and
feathered.

MfG
Goswin


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Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

On Dec 07, Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de> wrote:

> Give everyone at least 10 years headstart to migrate existing systems
> away from having a seperate /usr partition and for people to stop making
> a seperate /usr on new installs.
Actually, Red Hat's goal *is* to support a separate /usr, they just want
to have the initramfs mount it.

I am not really looking forward to keep reverting these changes in my
package, and since Red Hat controls most Linux infrastructure now other
packages will face the same problem.

--
ciao,
Marco

Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

On Wed, Dec 07, 2011 at 11:34:34AM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:

Actually, Red Hat's goal *is* to support a separate /usr, they just want
to have the initramfs mount it.


But as was seen in the last discussion, not everyone *has* an initramfs,
because it is not needed in many cases or sometimes even not supported on
the platform.


Shade and sweet water!

Stephan

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Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 09:00:35 +0000, Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 at 01:43:34 +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> > http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/hotplug/udev.git;a=commitdiff;h=12a362be5c1982f80dbfb75bda 070208a2c99cdf
> >
> > Discuss.
>
> As far as I can make out, their position is that a separate /usr is now only
> supported if you mount it from the initrd - which to be honest seems a
> reasonable way to keep existing separate-/usr systems working, without
> defeating the "/ is small" justification for a separate /usr by gradually
> migrating more and more of /usr into the root filesystem.
>
> It doesn't really address the "/ as recovery system" use of a separate /usr
> if your root filesystem can't boot unaided, but I'm far from convinced that
> a separate /usr makes / significantly more reliable, and an entirely
> separate installation (Debian Live on removable media, or a smaller Debian
> install in a separate partition that isn't normally even mounted) makes an
> even more reliable recovery system.

The problem with such rescue partitions is that if anything about your
setup is peculiar, then they are likely to rot in a way that ensures
that they will no longer support new features of the installed kernel on
the machine to be rescued. Likewise, if you've had to build a custom
kernel to support your hardware, then default rescue media may well not
help you.

RedHat can probably safely ignore that, because their users are not
quite as inventive as ours, and they're only really trying to address
the middle of the bell-curve anyway. That leaves us with
disproportionately more odd use cases, because they're not being catered
for by the commercial distros.

Also, as far as I've seen the default method for fixing RedHat systems
is to pop in a rescue disk (at least when I was an RHCX that was
certainly the suggested approach in their exams for many of the failure
modes). If that is the default solution anyway, then making it
impossible to use other recovery methods is not so much of a leap.

Personally, I think that resorting to rescue media is something of an
admission of defeat, but I'm probably a bit odd ;-)

I seem to occasionally find myself in situations where the machine
that's failed is the one that you'd use for downloading or burning the
rescue media, or for building the custom kernel needed for the hardware,
so that I'd have real pain if my only solution was getting hold of a
matching rescue disk. People using ARM seems likely to make this
situation more likely, as there seem to be way to many flavours of ARM.

Having said all that, it would be nice if we made the default setup
include a rescue partition, with hooks to ensure that kernels are
updated on the rescue partition (preferable after the system
successfully boots with the new kernel, say), and it's generally kept
happy and ready for use.

Cheers, Phil.
--
|)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] http://www.hands.com/
|-| HANDS.COM Ltd. http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND

Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

07.12.2011 04:43, Marco d'Itri пишет:
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/hotplug/udev.git;a=commitdiff;h=12a362be5c1982f80dbfb75bda 070208a2c99cdf
>
> Discuss.
>

I don't see any reason to move all into /usr from /,
and make initrd for minimal system:

Making self-contained initrd is the same problem
as making self-contained /

So why overhead?


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Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

On Dec 07, Stephan Seitz <stse+debian@fsing.rootsland.net> wrote:

> But as was seen in the last discussion, not everyone *has* an
> initramfs, because it is not needed in many cases or sometimes even
> not supported on the platform.
And as was seen, most of these setups can be modified to support this
scheme.
I also have a few ideas about how to support systems whose boot loaders
do not support loading an initramfs, does anybody have a list of them?

But still, this does not change the original question: how will we deal
with these significant upstream changes in many important packages.

--
ciao,
Marco

Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

On Wed, Dec 07, 2011 at 01:11:56PM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:

On Dec 07, Stephan Seitz <stse+debian@fsing.rootsland.net> wrote:

But as was seen in the last discussion, not everyone *has* an
initramfs, because it is not needed in many cases or sometimes even
not supported on the platform.

And as was seen, most of these setups can be modified to support this
scheme.


Yes, but by the admin, not by Debian, and the admin may not be interested
in adding a new layer of possible failures, because it works.



But still, this does not change the original question: how will we deal
with these significant upstream changes in many important packages.


Well, I think we should do the same we are doing with other packages
whose upstream uses thinks we don’t want (e.g. /opt or non-free files):
we patch it so that it fits the Debian way.


Shade and sweet water!

Stephan

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Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/
 

On 12/07/2011 07:03 PM, Philip Hands wrote:
>
> Personally, I think that resorting to rescue media is something of an
> admission of defeat, but I'm probably a bit odd ;-)
>
You're not Phil, I agree with the above statement!

Thomas (zigo)


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