Roger Leigh wrote:

> The question that needs answering is this:
>
> "what are the reasons, today, for a separate /usr?"

No, I don't think an answer to that precise question today would be
especially helpful. As far as I can tell, it is not especially
unsensible to use separate partitions for /usr, /etc, /var, /boot, and
/opt. And whether it is sensible or not, unless you have a tool in
mind that will automatically change the partitioning scheme of a
running system, that's not going to help udev or crda very much.

An obvious question to answer to help these programs is whether it
makes sense to make /usr a separate partition and not mount it before
starting init. An even more obvious question is "where is the patch
for initramfs-tools?". ;-)

[...]
> The same argument applies to encryption. / and /usr both contain a
> selection of programs, libraries etc. If you're encrypting one, why
> would you not encrypt all of it? And the same for mounting read-only.

Regarding mounting read-only: files in /etc change far more often than
files in /usr/bin, for one thing.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan



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Two clarifications:

Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Roger Leigh wrote:

>> The question that needs answering is this:
>>
>> "what are the reasons, today, for a separate /usr?"
>
> No, I don't think an answer to that precise question today would be
> especially helpful.

I'd like to apologize for this response. Hearing use cases is always
welcome, especially when they are given in the spirit of being helpful
rather than defensiveness.

> As far as I can tell, it is not especially
> unsensible to use separate partitions for /usr, /etc, /var, /boot, and
> /opt.

It occured to me too late that it might sound like I am saying a /etc
partition separate from / can work. By "separate" I only meant
"distinct" (i.e., the /usr, /etc, /var, etc inodes all coming from
different mounts).

I also think I misunderstood your message. What kind of unification
are you advocating? Fedora's setup, for example, allows /usr to be a
separate filesystem.

Sorry for the noise,
Jonathan



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On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 03:31:41PM -0600, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Two clarifications:
>
> Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> > Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> >> The question that needs answering is this:
> >>
> >> "what are the reasons, today, for a separate /usr?"
> >
> > No, I don't think an answer to that precise question today would be
> > especially helpful.
>
> I'd like to apologize for this response. Hearing use cases is always
> welcome, especially when they are given in the spirit of being helpful
> rather than defensiveness.

No worries, sorry if my initial response was also rather aggressive.
I would simply like to have some critical thought put into considering
/why/ we have things the way they are, rather than having "historical
reasons" as a rather unsatisfying answer, especially when those reasons
may no longer be applicable.

> > As far as I can tell, it is not especially
> > unsensible to use separate partitions for /usr, /etc, /var, /boot, and
> > /opt.
>
> It occured to me too late that it might sound like I am saying a /etc
> partition separate from / can work. By "separate" I only meant
> "distinct" (i.e., the /usr, /etc, /var, etc inodes all coming from
> different mounts).
>
> I also think I misunderstood your message. What kind of unification
> are you advocating? Fedora's setup, for example, allows /usr to be a
> separate filesystem.

I'm not currently really advocating for any specific unification now.
While I think in the long run it would make sense to merge the
content of / and /usr, I don't think wheezy is the right time for it.
We might want to do some groundwork though, such as not having
duplicate paths on / and /usr.

There are two different questions here:
- do we want do permit /usr as a separately-mountable filesystem?
- do we want /usr at all?

The udev concerns the first; though being able to mount /usr in
the initramfs would ameliorate that. Long-term though, we might
want to do away with it entirely and leave it as a compatibility
symlink (for new installs).


Regards,
Roger

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