> It would be nice if a sensible structure could be proposed and > agreed by ALL Linux distributions (coordinated with BSD). >
+1 If a new file system standard is required, my preferences based on a history of what is worked and changed over the last 20-30 years would be: - OK with requiring / and /usr on the same FS. This has become common practice with virtualization and small system deployments, and I haven't seen any compelling advantage for keeping separate on larger boxes. - NOT OK with limitation on allowing /var, /opt, /home, or any other common server mount points to require use of initramfs/initrd. There is enough disagreement as to the reliability and ease of maintenance of initramfs/initrd that it should not be needed for common server deployments. - It would be nice if the rootfs used a snapshot based filesystem and if the bootloader was intelligent enough to easily allow admins to boot to older snapshots as an expectation for any standard modern unix system. - Ideally, server motherboards would come with flash based storage where sysadmins could install rescue environments as part of a normal unix install, and that the boot loader or bios would be smart enough to provide the option to boot from it automatically whenever a normal boot failed. - NOT OK with removing the distinction between user and system binaries. Essential binaries required to boot and troubleshoot system problems should be located separately from user binaries. Security sensitive or paranoid admins should be able to make the system binary path read-only or completely remove the user binary directory from roots PATH if they so wish. - OK with merging / and /usr, but in that case...why not just move everything in /usr to /...but limit /sbin to system binaries and /bin to user ones? This would be horrible for migrations though and possibly confuse many scripts. - NOT OK with making systemd the default init system anytime in the next few years, it is way too immature and like most major system software changes...probably will take much longer before it really has the standing to propose being a new standard. - What other elements can new filesystems like btrfs offer that should be considered? ext3/ext4 has worked great with the older standards...but it essentially mimicked the capabilities of older file-systems that the original unix standards were based on. Btrfs might change our expectations. I'm assuming that btrfs will be the standard production fs in a few years.
