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On Wednesday 27 November 2002 11:40, b-r-i-a-n - wrote:
> Honestly, I'm surprised if you don't think the file system is cluttered.
colour yourself surprised then. ;-)
> Have you taken a look in /etc or /usr/bin lately?
yes. and i even understand why it's like that.
> The file system is just one aspect of the evolution of Linux. I was just
> indicating that I personally thought that was one area that could be worked
> on. I was also trying to explain that I felt that before "hiding" the file
> system it should be cleaned up.
implicit assumption: it needs cleaning up becaues it doesn't serve any useful
purpose in its current state.
that's an assumption i can't agree with. it is useful and can and is made
accessable to users through appropriate representation and access. and i'm
not talking only about GUIs either, but things like tab completion and $PATH.
> The file system is anything but perfect in its current state. I'm not
again, i'm left asking: why? what exactly is wrong with it?
you say that there are too many items in /usr/bin, for example. this has
decided benefits, such as limited paths needed and common locations for
binaries which makes administration, compatibility and auditing easier. we
have .desktop files and automcompletion to make such things more accessable
to average users.
you say that there aren't enough standards. mark already has pointed out that
it isn't really for lack of standards, but for lack of applications following
them.
i'd sooner see people lobbying the XFree86 devels to clean up their act than
the FHS people to change that standard.
> As far as how it would be decluttered... Well for starters config files
> under /etc should follow a more standard format and be combined where
> possible for like services.
yes, it would be nice if the file FORMATs were more similar. unfortunately,
there is too much legacy code around and too many independant developers for
that to be an achievable goal any time soon. over time this will improve,
however. things are converging; more apps are moving to bind/apache-like, XML
based or INI style configs. there are fewer and fewer oddball configs out
there.
but this really has nothing to do with the FS layout, right?
> I shouldn't have to go under /etc/X11, for
> example, and find a million config files just to make one little change to
> XWindows.
X, as mark pointed out, is an abomination. it is old, old software (which
isn't all bad, since it is becoming quite mature and well developed) and so
sports much legacy cruft.
one solution is to make it so you don't have to hand tweak those files unless
you know what you are doing. the X RandR extension along with other such
related developments will make you (and me and probably millions of others)
quite happy in this regard. =)
> I get annoyed having to sit there waiting for grep to look
> through every single file, just to find the file you need to edit.
that's why we usually name the file after the program it configures!
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf ... /etc/inetd.conf ... /etc/logrotate.conf ..
/etc/passwd ... /etc/groups ...
the services that tend to be the biggest pains in the ass (e.g. X) tend to be
old school apps with a lot of unfortunate history and baggage around them.
> At
> least if like services used a single config file you would know for sure
> what settings are in what file.
and then end up with gigantic files with fragile internal divisions, problems
with package ownership, greater chances of namespace collisions, etc.
contrary to popular opinion, programmers tend to have IQ's above 80 and can
even be creative when pushed. they don't tend to make random decisions that
make no sense whatsoever, especially when using their free time to do so.
contrary to popular opinion, system administrators don't like making their
life more difficult by creating config systems that are difficult to navigate
or manage.
it's amazing how wrong popular opinion can be ;-)
> Often between distributions they create
> their own special config files to do various things. I see this as adding
> to clutter and confusion.
couldn't agree more here.
<mantra>LSB, FHS</mantra>
> Here is a day-to-day benifit. I have to sit there for close to a half an
> hour on an older machine waiting for a bloody directory listing to
> finnish(try doing this in /usr/bin).
jeebus. what are you running, a 386 w/4MB of RAM with /usr on a fat formatted
floppy? i have 868 items in /user/bin on my PII 400 here on an ext2 fs and it
takes just .23 seconds to list it's contents, .83 if i ls -l (mostly due to
the slowness of my terminal)
> I think it is very evident that
> something is wrong with the file system when that is the case. The day
> that isn't the case, yes I would see that as a real day-to-day benifit.
why, because you often list /usr/bin?
- --
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
- Albert Einstein
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