]] Bruce Dubbs | Currently the FHS has a discussion in Chapter 2 about sharable and | unsharable files that are static or dynamic. | | The example shows /usr as a prototypical static, shared directory. The | implication is that /usr can be mounted from a remote host. | | The problem is that /usr has become a place that is necessary before a | network mount is available. For instance, if an administrator finds it | necessary to use lspci, or lsusb before the networked /usr is mounted, | the pci.ids and usb.ids files are not available.
I think http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken is relevant in this context. | Where then, should a program store auxiliary data files that may be | needed before any networking is configured? Candidates from the current | top level programs include /bin, /boot, /dev, /lib, /root, and /sbin. | None of these seems appropriate. | | Perhaps a subdirectory hierarchy in /lib, say /lib/data/<package>/ may | be appropriate, but that goes against the current definition of /lib | that says: 'Essential shared libraries and kernel modules'. | | Another option is yet another top level directory, but that is unappealing. Another option is to deprecate or disallow /usr not being on the root file system. Separate /usr made sense back when drives were small and disk space was expensive, but in the vast majority of cases today, having /usr on the root file system is no real burden. Not having it on the root file system means more brittle setups and trying to share /usr between installations can easily lead to maintenance headaches. Separate /usr makes sense is in the embedded case where you are seriously space-restricted and you might want have your OS on fast flash and the apps and user data on cheaper, but slower flash. In those cases, I'd suggest putting apps in /opt rather than the more common /usr. Regards, -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are _______________________________________________ fhs-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/fhs-discuss
