options: was Red Hat is moving from / to /usr/

12-13-2011, 12:55 AM

I'm a UN*X dinosaur. I started using UN*X in 1984.

I don't like this idea of folding /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin into
/usr/bin.

I think the reasons to segregate /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin
and anything in /usr/local/* still exist today.

I want more segregation, not less. Actually, I've wanted all the
config for /usr to be in /etc/usr (which is a symlink to /usr/etc)
for a long time.

But, by the time anyone hear of efforts such as this, there seldom
seems to be time to stop them.

Hence, my question is, if this continues to happen, what do we
move to for a kernel? Free-BSD? Plan 9? Something else? Is
anyone working on a migration scheme?

--
Gord

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12-13-2011, 01:28 AM

On Mon, 2011-12-12 at 18:55 -0700, Gordon Haverland wrote:
> I'm a UN*X dinosaur. I started using UN*X in 1984.
>
> I don't like this idea of folding /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin into
> /usr/bin.
>
> I think the reasons to segregate /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin
> and anything in /usr/local/* still exist today.

Which reasons? They changed from time to time. Last time I looked,
on a Debian system /sbin did not contain statically-linked binaries.

> I want more segregation, not less. Actually, I've wanted all the
> config for /usr to be in /etc/usr (which is a symlink to /usr/etc)
> for a long time.
>
> But, by the time anyone hear of efforts such as this, there seldom
> seems to be time to stop them.
>
> Hence, my question is, if this continues to happen, what do we
> move to for a kernel? Free-BSD? Plan 9? Something else? Is
> anyone working on a migration scheme?

FreeBSD userland is largely a throwback to the 90s, so it's probably
just what you're looking for.

Plan 9 has precisely the unification you so hate.

Ben.

--
Ben Hutchings
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.

12-13-2011, 08:44 AM

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 06:55:18PM -0700, Gordon Haverland wrote:
> I'm a UN*X dinosaur. I started using UN*X in 1984.
>
> I don't like this idea of folding /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin into
> /usr/bin.
>
> I think the reasons to segregate /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin
> and anything in /usr/local/* still exist today.

What are those reasons?

I agree with /usr/local being separate, but /bin and /usr/bin?
What is the advantage to having them separate on a running
system? Other than historical practice?

(http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00152.html
gives a bunch of historical uses which are no longer useful.)

I don't agree with the Fedora strategy of migrating /bin to
/usr/bin etc. I think if anything we should do what would make
most sense in the long run, which would be to eliminate /usr
entirely and most the content of /usr to /. Migrating to /usr
is a bit simpler for partitioning, but not particularly logical.

> I want more segregation, not less. Actually, I've wanted all the
> config for /usr to be in /etc/usr (which is a symlink to /usr/etc)
> for a long time.

On a system managed with a package manager, this makes no sense--
the content of /usr is intimately tied to the content of /etc.
In other contexts it might be useful, but for Debian it is not.

Regards,
Roger

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