Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Rich Freeman wrote: On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Dalerdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: From a users perspective. Could it not be possible to have some USE flag, or other setting, that would tell portage that a separate /usr partition is being used then have the needed files placed elsewhere on / ? I'm not a dev and I don't play one on TV but I do like options and being able to customize some things. It is one of the things Gentoo is about. I don't see what a USE flag gets us: 1. If you have a separate /usr then either booting without an initramfs will work or it won't work - largely depending on how complex your environment is. Booting with an initramfs will work reliably (well, if we sort out the initramfs situation - having done some more tests I have one virtual machine which was pretty easy to get running, and one physical box that for whatever reason wouldn't detect/start the RAID). 2. If you don't have a separate /usr than booting will always work regardless of where the files are, since the system will always find them. Unless what is being proposed is to actually do the Fedora thing and make /bin, /lib, etc a symlink into /usr/bin, /usr/lib, etc than there isn't anything at package-install time for the flag to affect. If we do want to do the Fedora thing would a flag even work, since those directories get created from the stage3? It seems to me that if you want the symlinks you just need to set them up when doing the install (or from a rescue disk), and then the package manager should follow the links when doing subsequent installs. Oh, and not all package managers like the top-level directories to be symlinks. I think that as was the case with the use of bash vs sh we may need to have a policy decision made here. Right now the general policy has been to conform to FHS, and the Fedora/etc proposal does not do this (and apparently we are already a bit out of compliance). I think that moving in a different direction is a big decision. And, if we do decide to move in that direction, I agree with Samuli that we need a transition plan. Packages can't just start breaking initrd-less setups left and right overnight. To start, we need to get dracut/etc configurable to mount any necessary directories (I checked - it is fairly smart (though not 100% effective) at finding root, but does not try to mount anything else). Then we need to update our documentation. Then we need to communicate the change to users, and give them time to migrate. Only then can packages have the freedom to require usr to be available at boot. I don't propose that if we move in this direction that we fix anything that isn't currently FHS-compliant - the damage is already done. We just should avoid propagating the situation until users are ready. Rich The USE flag was just one option that I could think of. That is why I also said or something along with that. You devs are good at coming up with neato tools to fix stuff. ;-) I understand that Fedora is wanting to do this. What I don't understand is why. It seems it is udev that is wrecking this havoc. I like udev myself and it seems to work fine but surely something can be done to fix this without breaking something else. It seems from your reply that it is breaking the rules of FHS which if Gentoo follows will then be breaking FHS as well and this will likely force others to do the same. Can someone not explain this to the people that are pushing this? I saw it mentioned somewhere that a /run directory can be created. Since it would likely be small, I wouldn't mind that. I'd be fine if the same files were installed in both /usr/*bin and /run. I just like being able to have /usr, /var and /home on a separate partition without a init*. I usually start my system out as /, /boot and /home. Then after the install is done, I figure up the space need based on the space used and copy to a new drive that is partitioned out as /boot, /, /home, /usr, and /var. I am sure there are users that have to have /usr and/or /var on a separate partition but don't want a init* to deal with. Again, my $0.02. Whatever that is worth. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 2:04 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I understand that Fedora is wanting to do this. What I don't understand is why. It seems it is udev that is wrecking this havoc. Well, the answer is a bit more nuanced. First, keep in mind that in a typical linux distro the end user does not build their own kernel (sure, there is usually a way to do it, but the distro doesn't encourage this). Instead you get a one-size-fits-all kernel with just about everything compiled into modules. This invariably requires an initramfs to boot, since you can't tell what drivers will be needed to mount root. So, anybody with a mainstream distro already has an initramfs. Now that you have everything in modules, how do you figure out which modules to load/etc? Well, in the end udev becomes the best tool for this. Then the question comes up, if you're going to use udev to configure your mouse, why not use it to configure even the most essential boot-time devices and avoid re-inventing the wheel? So, now the big distros are in the state they're currently in - they end up needing /usr mounted anyway due to the evolution of udev. It sort-of crept up on them. Now, what Fedora is currently proposing is to turn this from a bug into a feature. As long as we need to have /usr around anyway - why not get rid of /bin, /lib, and so on. What they plan to do is move all these files under /usr, with compatibility links in the other root directories. Then you can mount /usr as read-only (or maybe even run it from nfs), and every single executable/library on the system is better protected from accidental modification. This requires initramfs support, but they already have an initramfs and so they just have to add a few lines to mount it (dracut already parses /etc/fstab to mount root and has just about all the userspace logic in place to do what mount already does on a booted system, so it can probably just do little more than a mount /usr to accomplish this). Since most distros are already using an initramfs, they also have leveraged this to add additional features, like identifying root devices by UUID, allowing root on LVM+raid or NFS, or iSCSI, or whatever. Also, LUKS support is pretty common - you can install Ubuntu and check a box and everything gets encrypted. So, basically other distros already need to support initramfs, and they just keep going down a path of leveraging this further. It all stems from their original decision to make one kernel to rule them all, and make it modular so that it doesn't eat up half of RAM in doing so. I saw it mentioned somewhere that a /run directory can be created. Since it would likely be small, I wouldn't mind that. I'd be fine if the same files were installed in both /usr/*bin and /run. So, I believe the purpose of /run is to be a future location for what currently goes in places like /var/run - this is state information, sockets, etc that have no meaning after a reboot. Most likely it would be implemented as a tmpfs or something along those lines. It would not contain copies of anything in /usr/bin/etc. Then /var becomes a place for caches that have meaning between reboots (spools, etc). Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Historically those DIRs contained all utils/tools to manage the system and fix problems etc. when you are unable to get /usr up, i.e. when it's remote. The rootfs basically contained all the core system-tools minus all the apps, which usually were managed centrally. With bbox of course one could mimic this to a certain point easily within an initramfs though. Regards -Sven On Mon, 2011-08-01 at 15:45 +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: Historically /bin, /sbin, /lib had the purpose to contain the utilities to mount /usr. This role can now be taken by the initramfs. Because the initramfs knows, where to find the root partition (which includes /etc), it can parse /etc/fstab and other configuration files and mount /usr before it finally switches the root partition and executes /usr/bin/init. From this point on init mounts the remaining partitions in /etc/fstab and the system starts as usual. Cheers, Kacper
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 08/04/2011 05:30 AM, Michał Górny wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:27:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? So, let's sum up a little. The most common argument against separate /usr requiring a proper initramfs is 'it works now, thus it's great'. That is practically understandable that people don't like to switch things upside down like that, especially when machines are not locally reachable. What's the exact differences between an initramfs and an early bootup setup in rootfs? As I see it: - initramfs is a small fs which is used for a short while on boot, to setup the system necessarily for the early bootup sequence, - while initial rootfs is a rather large piece of fs which is supposed to contain random stuff necessary for the early bootup to be able to proceed and mount the necessary remaining stuff before the actual bootup begins. And we're mostly stuck with it for the whole runtime. As I see it, I see no reason to keep forcing things like complete glibc, ncurses and the whole other lot of libraries for the early bootup if all needed is some kind of minimal 'mount' program (for instance). In the ol' days I tried building a NFS-shared system and the main problem was that some of early run tools relied heavily on the local system libs and files before they were replaced by NFS mounts. And I had to keep them in sync manually which is not the most comfortable thing. I don't see how trying to fit the best set of libs and files into rootfs can solve it. You either want for the system to be clean or weirdly split to support various possible configurations. And decide which are not 'weird enough' not to support. And really, most of the things about separate /usr are hacks which were introduced because the system was incapable of a proper rootfs. Read-only /usr should be read-only rootfs with writable mounts on top of it. NFS-mounted /usr should be the whole system part network-mounted (which would be easier if everything went into /usr rather than being split). It seems what we need is an migration plan. Sending out a Portage News item, and correcting documentation as first step. Then giving people enough time to migrate. This would give us plenty of time to work on the details for moving the files over from / to /usr. It seems non-problematic for new installs, as stages could ship the symlinks and files get installed to /usr through them, even before the packages are changed.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 04-08-2011 07:55, Samuli Suominen wrote: On 08/04/2011 05:30 AM, Michał Górny wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:27:27 +0300 snip So, let's sum up a little. The most common argument against separate /usr requiring a proper initramfs is 'it works now, thus it's great'. That is practically understandable that people don't like to switch things upside down like that, especially when machines are not locally reachable. What's the exact differences between an initramfs and an early bootup setup in rootfs? As I see it: - initramfs is a small fs which is used for a short while on boot, to setup the system necessarily for the early bootup sequence, - while initial rootfs is a rather large piece of fs which is supposed to contain random stuff necessary for the early bootup to be able to proceed and mount the necessary remaining stuff before the actual bootup begins. And we're mostly stuck with it for the whole runtime. As I see it, I see no reason to keep forcing things like complete glibc, ncurses and the whole other lot of libraries for the early bootup if all needed is some kind of minimal 'mount' program (for instance). In the ol' days I tried building a NFS-shared system and the main problem was that some of early run tools relied heavily on the local system libs and files before they were replaced by NFS mounts. And I had to keep them in sync manually which is not the most comfortable thing. I don't see how trying to fit the best set of libs and files into rootfs can solve it. You either want for the system to be clean or weirdly split to support various possible configurations. And decide which are not 'weird enough' not to support. And really, most of the things about separate /usr are hacks which were introduced because the system was incapable of a proper rootfs. Read-only /usr should be read-only rootfs with writable mounts on top of it. NFS-mounted /usr should be the whole system part network-mounted (which would be easier if everything went into /usr rather than being split). It seems what we need is an migration plan. Sending out a Portage News item, and correcting documentation as first step. Then giving people enough time to migrate. This would give us plenty of time to work on the details for moving the files over from / to /usr. Again, not all of us are willing to migrate away from a separate /usr partition, least of all when that is being imposed by some people trying to shove their pet projects to others and when we don't agree with or acknowledge the arguments. It seems non-problematic for new installs, as stages could ship the symlinks and files get installed to /usr through them, even before the packages are changed. The symlinks will have to be part of baselayout as files get into stages through packages and not through catalyst. - -- Regards, Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / KDE / Elections / RelEng -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJOOn/LAAoJEC8ZTXQF1qEPOQsP+we6tifTVnCXqr46ajXa2Xft NqXhJfxmONGbbhfDYPhoNiGK5ovojpoDncKEE0t158X35QfLRjqFqrudbPDUNzrh /zEJmQYacZckyMT866PE2iJBovEA5ZBnXB8y6RBHJLH3ky5/dO8R92jHSnNihi1y u639+dpRHP6cRQIk9i2sEHaph+bZo6e3X+GCT6FL63m4sNDSBfJGo4wtMewp/aDD HS2Ya41WAt+SYA131QLcVwLhyDz7sRdQm1iR7W06iScMxgE/mKHF9S25NKMYf+H+ Qtd+PF1SLcxC1lKztPsmNTr1lpDLlAoO5OQzpOnXoPmCWvuzBVyrHfSPo+cxQOFM 6VA0mjdNODS4gbEL5Fu8Q/Asf3/byJ7gBOfLNuHkMksMfLSy/O0KXjx3fnmpj1a0 yXlt+iuer7z5rwuz7ZfXNCmw0DWzuMOUimz1jz0pUwTzXDD9zZJXKHOt/RR4oQb8 NLldmh8YBcl17r6l60H49GWyL8YiIhQetBZuNi9+Pm72o3vVsKmCnyXHP1Cf0CsQ ziVy4+Lub2qSSQfndrTHnJ6rDIDFSLT4iZYRDJmlf6Mhrk7abogze/s0Vgfkfrfl yJVNVPG3Evk4d1qIFROSmQhhu44EOkufhijYvytpCHeNLvWUupeaMZOchX6QUXp4 4FhE/udxLI1zpQtTHLbJ =DhRY -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote: Again, not all of us are willing to migrate away from a separate /usr partition, least of all when that is being imposed by some people trying to shove their pet projects to others and when we don't agree with or acknowledge the arguments. +1 From a users perspective. Could it not be possible to have some USE flag, or other setting, that would tell portage that a separate /usr partition is being used then have the needed files placed elsewhere on / ? I'm not a dev and I don't play one on TV but I do like options and being able to customize some things. It is one of the things Gentoo is about. I find it sort of ironic that I was planning to redo my partitions and have a separate /usr and now finding out that it is basically no longer a option on Gentoo. At least I am reading this now instead of afterwards. No, initramfs is not something I want to have to deal with either. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: From a users perspective. Could it not be possible to have some USE flag, or other setting, that would tell portage that a separate /usr partition is being used then have the needed files placed elsewhere on / ? I'm not a dev and I don't play one on TV but I do like options and being able to customize some things. It is one of the things Gentoo is about. I don't see what a USE flag gets us: 1. If you have a separate /usr then either booting without an initramfs will work or it won't work - largely depending on how complex your environment is. Booting with an initramfs will work reliably (well, if we sort out the initramfs situation - having done some more tests I have one virtual machine which was pretty easy to get running, and one physical box that for whatever reason wouldn't detect/start the RAID). 2. If you don't have a separate /usr than booting will always work regardless of where the files are, since the system will always find them. Unless what is being proposed is to actually do the Fedora thing and make /bin, /lib, etc a symlink into /usr/bin, /usr/lib, etc than there isn't anything at package-install time for the flag to affect. If we do want to do the Fedora thing would a flag even work, since those directories get created from the stage3? It seems to me that if you want the symlinks you just need to set them up when doing the install (or from a rescue disk), and then the package manager should follow the links when doing subsequent installs. Oh, and not all package managers like the top-level directories to be symlinks. I think that as was the case with the use of bash vs sh we may need to have a policy decision made here. Right now the general policy has been to conform to FHS, and the Fedora/etc proposal does not do this (and apparently we are already a bit out of compliance). I think that moving in a different direction is a big decision. And, if we do decide to move in that direction, I agree with Samuli that we need a transition plan. Packages can't just start breaking initrd-less setups left and right overnight. To start, we need to get dracut/etc configurable to mount any necessary directories (I checked - it is fairly smart (though not 100% effective) at finding root, but does not try to mount anything else). Then we need to update our documentation. Then we need to communicate the change to users, and give them time to migrate. Only then can packages have the freedom to require usr to be available at boot. I don't propose that if we move in this direction that we fix anything that isn't currently FHS-compliant - the damage is already done. We just should avoid propagating the situation until users are ready. Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 06:49:36AM -0500, Dale wrote: Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote: Again, not all of us are willing to migrate away from a separate /usr partition, least of all when that is being imposed by some people trying to shove their pet projects to others and when we don't agree with or acknowledge the arguments. +1 Add another to the list of folks who disagree with this and with the approach being taken. I don't blame gentoo devs per se, but I do feel like this is being forced down everyone's throats without any regard to the *nix philosophy of having separate /usr which has worked for years, and if people would fix their bugs correctly would continue to work. William pgp0t0t8qZKpz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Looks like the Linux Foundation has a; quote Call for Participation The LSB workgroup is preparing FHS 3.0, which will be the first FHS release since 2004. As part of that release, we are soliciting contributions from all interested parties. /quote http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/lsb/fhs -- David Abbott (dabbott) Gentoo http://dev.gentoo.org/~dabbott/
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 09:31:07AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote: Add another to the list of folks who disagree with this and with the approach being taken. I don't blame gentoo devs per se, but I do feel like this is being forced down everyone's throats without any regard to the *nix philosophy of having separate /usr which has worked for years, and if people would fix their bugs correctly would continue to work. Same here. I do consider the situation to be a bug and, even if the damage is already done, it doesn't mean we should help with debolishing what is left. If anything, we should make it clear to users when and why an initramfs is needed. Saying because you have a /usr on a separate file system is not only a lie, it also covers the truth beneath it. Rather, why not identify in which situation(s) you will need an initramfs and work from there? I personally have /usr on a separate partition too (using LVM) without an initramfs or initrd. Works just fine. And I'd like to keep it that way, since it is simple and very manageable. Wkr, Sven Vermeulen
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 10:42 AM, David Abbott dabb...@gentoo.org wrote: The LSB workgroup is preparing FHS 3.0, which will be the first FHS release since 2004. As part of that release, we are soliciting contributions from all interested parties. More interesting was this thread on their mailing list: https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/fhs-discuss/2011-July/000326.html There was no further reply - so unless this is isolated thinking the intent of FHS is not to dictate what is available during boot. Oh, and that anybody not using initramfs is a nutcase or something... :) Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 09:31:07AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote: On Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 06:49:36AM -0500, Dale wrote: Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote: Again, not all of us are willing to migrate away from a separate /usr partition, least of all when that is being imposed by some people trying to shove their pet projects to others and when we don't agree with or acknowledge the arguments. +1 Add another to the list of folks who disagree with this and with the approach being taken. I don't blame gentoo devs per se, but I do feel like this is being forced down everyone's throats without any regard to the *nix philosophy of having separate /usr which has worked for years, and if people would fix their bugs correctly would continue to work. The problem is that it really _hasn't_ worked for years, you just never saw the problem. And that's fine, but when things start randomly breaking in the future, if you persist in this type of setup, then you at least will know who to blame :) Also, again, this is an upstream issue, based on the packages you have installed, not anything that has changed in the distro itself. Upstream is also working to resolve the issue already, by mounting /usr from the initramfs, to keep this sane, so people shouldn't really have to worry about this too much, unless they don't use an initramfs... good luck, greg k-h
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Greg KH gre...@gentoo.org wrote: Also, again, this is an upstream issue, based on the packages you have installed, not anything that has changed in the distro itself. Upstream is also working to resolve the issue already, by mounting /usr from the initramfs, to keep this sane, so people shouldn't really have to worry about this too much, unless they don't use an initramfs... Agree. The news was a little shocking to me actually - I had no idea people were doing this. I suspect it just happened as things like udev went from enhancements used when you inserted something in a pcmcia slot to core features used to get everything from your hard drive to your mouse to work. The more I think about it, the more it seems like we're stuck going the initramfs route unless we want to become Gentoo vs the world. Dropping support for udev clearly isn't going to be a practical option, and the number of changes we'd have to make to get it and its dependencies out of /usr is going to be a challenge. I suspect that in the end we're either going to end up requiring initramfs, or we're going to end up implementing what is otherwise in dracut in openrc to get those drives mounted much earlier. Gentoo is a bit unusual in not requiring initramfs in the first place. We can get away it mostly because everybody customizes their kernels/grub/etc anyway. If you're a binary distro and want a one bzImage/grub.conf fits all then you need a fancy initramfs to make it work. Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:27:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? So, let's sum up a little. The most common argument against separate /usr requiring a proper initramfs is 'it works now, thus it's great'. That is practically understandable that people don't like to switch things upside down like that, especially when machines are not locally reachable. What's the exact differences between an initramfs and an early bootup setup in rootfs? As I see it: - initramfs is a small fs which is used for a short while on boot, to setup the system necessarily for the early bootup sequence, - while initial rootfs is a rather large piece of fs which is supposed to contain random stuff necessary for the early bootup to be able to proceed and mount the necessary remaining stuff before the actual bootup begins. And we're mostly stuck with it for the whole runtime. As I see it, I see no reason to keep forcing things like complete glibc, ncurses and the whole other lot of libraries for the early bootup if all needed is some kind of minimal 'mount' program (for instance). In the ol' days I tried building a NFS-shared system and the main problem was that some of early run tools relied heavily on the local system libs and files before they were replaced by NFS mounts. And I had to keep them in sync manually which is not the most comfortable thing. I don't see how trying to fit the best set of libs and files into rootfs can solve it. You either want for the system to be clean or weirdly split to support various possible configurations. And decide which are not 'weird enough' not to support. And really, most of the things about separate /usr are hacks which were introduced because the system was incapable of a proper rootfs. Read-only /usr should be read-only rootfs with writable mounts on top of it. NFS-mounted /usr should be the whole system part network-mounted (which would be easier if everything went into /usr rather than being split). -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:28:54 +0200 Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn chith...@gentoo.org wrote: Samuli Suominen schrieb: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? If you have / encrypted, then you can leave /usr unencrypted as it contains no secrets. Also /usr can remain mounted read-only most of the time, so there is a reduced chance of accidental corruption. I don't know the number of users who might want this, and I imagine it is difficult to count them. BTW doesn't encrypting rootfs require initramfs anyway? -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 4:02 AM, Michał Górny mgo...@gentoo.org wrote: BTW doesn't encrypting rootfs require initramfs anyway? Yup. On a side note. I've been experimenting with Dracut+LVM+RAID5 and have found that it actually works pretty transparently. Now, I haven't tried it with /usr not on the rootfs - I can tell that Dracut is definitely parsing my /etc/fstab to mount my root, but I'm not sure if it tries to mount anything else by default. It is fairly slick - it mounts root any way it can read-only to get to the fstab, and then remounts it following the options in fstab. (Which means that you need to make sure fstab is accurate since it actually gets used for the rootfs now.) I also found that the dracut initramfs is MUCH faster than the genkernel one - it does a good job of only loading drivers necessary to find the root, and it can take hints to speed that up. It also required less configuration - the only required kernel parameter even for mdadm+lvm is root= (which takes device, UUID, or label). I got it working with an old-metadata /boot (probably need to mess with grub v2 to avoid that, assuming that even works), and then everything else including root on mdadm-raid5+LVM. So, my feeling is that while we should support minimal (ie non-gnome/etc) configurations that follow FHS and don't require an initramfs, I don't really see leveraging dracut as a big problem as long as we update our documentation to make the preferred approach clear. Everybody should also read that Fedora link earlier in the thread: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove I'm not suggesting that we should do this, but this does seem like a legitimate use-case. It is a bit more suited to binary distros with release cycles, but I could see in a datacenter how it might be nice to NFS-mount just about everything including /usr, /bin, /lib, etc. Such a setup would actually be pretty easy to accomplish with Gentoo - in theory you can just create symlinks for the various root directories into /usr and let the package manager install the files into them. In practice it might run into issues (I know that symlinks for some of the top-level directories were not liked by some of the package managers in the past - I had to use bind mounts to accomplish this, and that might be a better solution though I have no idea if Dracut can figure that out in fstab). Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 07/31/2011 02:22 PM, Kacper Kowalik wrote: W dniu 30.07.2011 15:55, Samuli Suominen pisze: On 07/30/2011 01:46 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:27:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? It's important to consider the timeline here. Separate /usr was accidentally broken by a sudden increase in dependencies from base system packages to desktopy things. It was only later that certain people decided that oh, separate /usr is a bad idea anyway, and they did so because they couldn't figure out how to fix the mess they'd caused. This is very much a case of carelessly letting the horse escape and then trying to convince everyone that no-one needs a horse anyway... Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? That covers headless/diskless clusters and I suspect many people still do that. Cheers, Kacper I haven't tested but it seems this is not a problem afterall: USE=nbd for dracut enables the NFS support: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Dracut/Options#NFS
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 07/31/2011 05:23 PM, Michał Górny wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:55:23 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: I dislike the IUSE=+static some packages are currently doing to workaround this, instead of moving the needed shared libs to / I dislike the idea of pciutils and usbutils database(s) in non-standard location in / to keep udev working I dislike the idea of moving libglib-2.0, libdbus-1, libdbus-glib-1, and couple of dozen more libs to / I dislike the idea of maintaining and keeping track of the files in / using files from /usr. Does any of the PMs have check for this, like NEEDED entries? I can imagine this getting past the maintainers easily otherwise Most likely still not seeing the full picture here, and just scratching the surface... Despite that, I don't have any strong opinion on any of this, just need to know if I should start moving the files over Honestly, I'd rather see system libs and apps being moved to /usr rather than the opposite. IMO the benefit of getting a clear tree is greater than benefits of having separate fs for 'system' and 'non-system' packages which actually tend to randomly depend one on another. that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague like adding 1+1 on / and /usr filesystem sizes and counting the risk of corrupted filesystem from that (one word: backup) and even then they can go with dracut and have the initramfs mount the /usr before init dracut with it's externsive modules covers the other mentioned cases too so pursuing for getting rid of shared/static -workarounds and / files depending on /usr files constistency not to mention avoiding moving a lot of files to / for pursuing that otherwise this is starting to look good: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr What's the point of having shared /usr if you need to keep /bin, /lib, /sbin in sync anyway? And considering the above, the number of files to keep separate synced is growing, and thus our potential / gets bigger and bigger.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Samuli Suominen schrieb: that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague like adding 1+1 on / and /usr filesystem sizes and counting the risk of corrupted filesystem from that (one word: backup) Maybe I have to explain in more detail: When is there a risk of data corruption involving /usr? For example, when the filesystem which contains /usr is being written to while the power fails or the kernel panics. But /usr is almost never written to, it is the other directories like /home, /var or the upcoming /run. Backup is orthogonal to this question. Best regards, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyen
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:23:07 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: this is starting to look good: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr Honestly, that seems like a poor draft to me. First of all, I don't see a reason to move /sbin to /usr/bin instead of /usr/sbin. Second of all, the benefits are much smaller if we still have to symlink all the dirs. I'd rather keep /bin (and maybe /sbin) on rootfs, and just symlink a few compat tools (like sh). Then we should start looking heavily for unnecessarily hardcoded paths. I don't think keeping /lib* is absolutely necessary. That one should be pretty easy to move. Of course, the largest problem is migrating existing systems with split / and /usr. -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 08/01/2011 10:45 AM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote: Samuli Suominen schrieb: that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague like adding 1+1 on / and /usr filesystem sizes and counting the risk of corrupted filesystem from that (one word: backup) Maybe I have to explain in more detail: When is there a risk of data corruption involving /usr? For example, when the filesystem which contains /usr is being written to while the power fails or the kernel panics. But /usr is almost never written to, it is the other directories like /home, /var or the upcoming /run. Backup is orthogonal to this question. should think this inverse; make separate partitions for the data directories such as /home or /var have /usr on / so when / goes down, you still keep your data right?
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Samuli Suominen schrieb: should think this inverse; make separate partitions for the data directories such as /home or /var have /usr on / so when / goes down, you still keep your data Putting /home and /var on separate partitions can increase isolation even further, that is true. On desktop systems, directories outside /usr and /home contribute not much to the total disk space used. So if you have one / and one /usr partition, the total amount of data that would be exposed to corruption is not much different from having all of /, /home, /usr and /var separate. On servers, it might make sense to keep /var separate depending on which services write there. Best regards, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 2011-08-01 10:23 AM, Samuli Suominen wrote: that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague I will switch if I have to but saying / and /usr on the same filesystem is the better technical solution just annoys me. I understand if going against upstream and keeping them seperate is not worth the hassle and noone steps up to do it. But then we should say so. Please don't kid yourself (or others). -- Eray Aslan e...@gentoo.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:22:02 +0200 Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn chith...@gentoo.org wrote: Samuli Suominen schrieb: should think this inverse; make separate partitions for the data directories such as /home or /var have /usr on / so when / goes down, you still keep your data Putting /home and /var on separate partitions can increase isolation even further, that is true. On desktop systems, directories outside /usr and /home contribute not much to the total disk space used. So if you have one / and one /usr partition, the total amount of data that would be exposed to corruption is not much different from having all of /, /home, /usr and /var separate. On desktop systems, it is common to have random hacks around. Sometimes large amounts of data are in /var, sometimes somewhere in /mnt, sometimes in /home. I don't think that setup is really worth considering deeply. On servers, it might make sense to keep /var separate depending on which services write there. BTW is the /srv concept dead already? -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 01-08-2011 08:31, Eray Aslan wrote: On 2011-08-01 10:23 AM, Samuli Suominen wrote: that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague I will switch if I have to but saying / and /usr on the same filesystem is the better technical solution just annoys me. I understand if going against upstream and keeping them seperate is not worth the hassle and noone steps up to do it. But then we should say so. Please don't kid yourself (or others). I agree with Eray. Furthermore, please stop trying to reverse the game. It's those that want to break existing policies and conventions that have to justify why they want to do that, not those that want to keep using what has worked for years. You may not need or like it, but I want to be able to use partition schemes like the following without needing to use an initramfs: /dev/md4/boot /dev/md2/ /dev/sda1 swap /dev/sdb1 swap /dev/vg/home/home /dev/vg/usr /usr /dev/vg/portage /usr/portage /dev/vg/distfiles /usr/portage/distfiles /dev/vg/var /var /dev/vg/vtmp/var/tmp /dev/vg/www /var/www /dev/vg/repos /home/repositories /dev/vg/release /home/release Also, desktop users that don't split the /usr path might not like the stress that /usr/portage will add to the / partition - not to talk about the size and inode constraints. With the above design, I have on a system the following disk space use: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs9,4G 262M 8,7G 3% / I'm growing tired of how complex and over-designed desktop technologies that hide stuff from the users keep trying to break the unix way and convince us they're awesome. No, I don't need or want *kit, groups exist for something. No, applications that do magic stuff with dbus and xml (and I like xml) on the users back and hide how X work aren't a good thing(tm). Finally, Gentoo's init system is and will likely be for a long time openrc, so stop trying to push crazy or experimental init systems - most with a seemingly poor design and unable to do what an init system needs to do (start and stop services). - -- Regards, Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / KDE / Elections / RelEng -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJONm+6AAoJEC8ZTXQF1qEP10wP/ifqJFPJxbpbhJfMc2+UpvAj Danv5I4hRhOhixfz5ni63Kw++kFmxJ2o0oSxmPOMUuIZgdakDAQFAMPhGnTZc6l6 /cqrraZjM215fcJLq3mzq2KfC+c6l45gLv87sagmwuTLLSDnFbXllY2vNo2KgQ/u Brf1IxqBMQeesC21gVNyewnLpWe/hPLqoigIYepBQt4Fg3GxhRYQuVcKC/oE9mO2 Z/0pOJW42fE5i5+VZRPUb7q9WC2bAlVQymRDc+Lt/b6f6VUIFa+SVgcCAkE2HoPo Xue+jiMNCDAvWuqmGeRGySDmAp3VtqobHjaaVkLXDJOG14u0HmP3qXK9oLtSA3Fz FUaL8yNjfjlZ94ntRZax2WCFat66tX03pF4QC/EQfnVx+8dgMUH3sop/s8Ay1pLX Q05sXhoEIyNMOfo04IJt6aQqgLqKHuxL9dTu+q1dN7pnQ5CGZ027W6XCe8251UIe 6wmyVwaQPQKSZ0N7j0LkqujFmCjPoFRCAN9QRPMM9g4rYTuVsjm49BjgFFFegQ+y qTM3lvriQR34a1x1khnnb44g+1611q92CuTjcr6B9Ho1IY6Osqk68y3hA2WTZ0+p S6+cKiBlnA1Q6+2lqcVP89Fb5WP44LHc5xmAvyzfx5LJsQ3XvINgrrx9kGbvgge7 wIY+OXxnZD8oW0MpiYO2 =ybUS -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 01-08-2011 08:31, Eray Aslan wrote: On 2011-08-01 10:23 AM, Samuli Suominen wrote: that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague I will switch if I have to but saying / and /usr on the same filesystem is the better technical solution just annoys me. I understand if going against upstream and keeping them seperate is not worth the hassle and noone steps up to do it. But then we should say so. Please don't kid yourself (or others). I agree with Eray. Furthermore, please stop trying to reverse the game. It's those that want to break existing policies and conventions that have to justify why they want to do that, not those that want to keep using what has worked for years. You may not need or like it, but I want to be able to use partition schemes like the following without needing to use an initramfs: /dev/md4/boot /dev/md2/ /dev/sda1 swap /dev/sdb1 swap /dev/vg/home/home /dev/vg/usr /usr /dev/vg/portage /usr/portage /dev/vg/distfiles /usr/portage/distfiles /dev/vg/var /var /dev/vg/vtmp/var/tmp /dev/vg/www /var/www /dev/vg/repos /home/repositories /dev/vg/release /home/release Also, desktop users that don't split the /usr path might not like the stress that /usr/portage will add to the / partition - not to talk about the size and inode constraints. With the above design, I have on a system the following disk space use: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs9,4G 262M 8,7G 3% / I'm growing tired of how complex and over-designed desktop technologies that hide stuff from the users keep trying to break the unix way and convince us they're awesome. No, I don't need or want *kit, groups exist for something. No, applications that do magic stuff with dbus and xml (and I like xml) on the users back and hide how X work aren't a good thing(tm). Finally, Gentoo's init system is and will likely be for a long time openrc, so stop trying to push crazy or experimental init systems - most with a seemingly poor design and unable to do what an init system needs to do (start and stop services). - -- Regards, Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / KDE / Elections / RelEng -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ As a user, I have /usr/portge on a separate partition as well. I was also planning to have a separate /usr partition soon when I redo my drive layout. It sounds like Gentoo is telling me I no longer have that option without having a initramfs. I guess I will have to decide whether I want to add one more thing to break to have a separate /usr or leave /usr on the / partition. I thought Gentoo was about choices? It seems one choice is being removed or is it? Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 05:58:49 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I thought Gentoo was about choices? It seems one choice is being removed or is it? Gentoo might be, but Fedora isn't. This is a decision that was made by one Fedora developer. -- Ciaran McCreesh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
* Samuli Suominen schrieb am 01.08.11 um 09:23 Uhr: On 07/31/2011 05:23 PM, Michał Górny wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:55:23 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: I dislike the IUSE=+static some packages are currently doing to workaround this, instead of moving the needed shared libs to / I dislike the idea of pciutils and usbutils database(s) in non-standard location in / to keep udev working I dislike the idea of moving libglib-2.0, libdbus-1, libdbus-glib-1, and couple of dozen more libs to / I dislike the idea of maintaining and keeping track of the files in / using files from /usr. Does any of the PMs have check for this, like NEEDED entries? I can imagine this getting past the maintainers easily otherwise Most likely still not seeing the full picture here, and just scratching the surface... Despite that, I don't have any strong opinion on any of this, just need to know if I should start moving the files over Honestly, I'd rather see system libs and apps being moved to /usr rather than the opposite. IMO the benefit of getting a clear tree is greater than benefits of having separate fs for 'system' and 'non-system' packages which actually tend to randomly depend one on another. that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague like adding 1+1 on / and /usr filesystem sizes and counting the risk of corrupted filesystem from that (one word: backup) and even then they can go with dracut and have the initramfs mount the /usr before init dracut with it's externsive modules covers the other mentioned cases too I always keep /usr seperate from / for isolation reasons. IMO there are some good reasons to do so: * For example if a filesystem fills 100%. Imagine your /usr is 100% full by accident. If you have a seperate / you always can still write to /etc or /root which might save your life. Sometimes a system might not even be bootable if / has no space left. Sure, this is not the case normally and never should be. But if it happens to you, you will be happy to have them seperated. * IMO its a good idea to seperate mostly static filesystems from those with many writes * Some people want a read-only /usr * /usr/portage can get very huge and is often written to. With / and /usr being on the same FS you really want to have /usr/portage on a seperate FS then I am sure there are some other reasons too. Just my 2¢ -Marc -- 8AAC 5F46 83B4 DB70 8317 3723 296C 6CCA 35A6 4134 pgpkzxf10zmuN.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
El lun, 01-08-2011 a las 13:12 +0200, Marc Schiffbauer escribió: [...] * /usr/portage can get very huge and is often written to. With / and /usr being on the same FS you really want to have /usr/portage on a seperate FS then I am sure there are some other reasons too. Just my 2¢ -Marc Having /usr/portage on a different partition will still be supported if I understood correctly (at least, it still works fine for me even having the rest of /usr under / partition) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
* Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto schrieb am 01.08.11 um 11:19 Uhr: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 01-08-2011 08:31, Eray Aslan wrote: On 2011-08-01 10:23 AM, Samuli Suominen wrote: that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague I will switch if I have to but saying / and /usr on the same filesystem is the better technical solution just annoys me. I understand if going against upstream and keeping them seperate is not worth the hassle and noone steps up to do it. But then we should say so. Please don't kid yourself (or others). I agree with Eray. Furthermore, please stop trying to reverse the game. It's those that want to break existing policies and conventions that have to justify why they want to do that, not those that want to keep using what has worked for years. You may not need or like it, but I want to be able to use partition schemes like the following without needing to use an initramfs: /dev/md4/boot /dev/md2/ /dev/sda1 swap /dev/sdb1 swap /dev/vg/home/home /dev/vg/usr /usr /dev/vg/portage /usr/portage /dev/vg/distfiles /usr/portage/distfiles /dev/vg/var /var /dev/vg/vtmp/var/tmp /dev/vg/www /var/www /dev/vg/repos /home/repositories /dev/vg/release /home/release Also, desktop users that don't split the /usr path might not like the stress that /usr/portage will add to the / partition - not to talk about the size and inode constraints. With the above design, I have on a system the following disk space use: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs9,4G 262M 8,7G 3% / I'm growing tired of how complex and over-designed desktop technologies that hide stuff from the users keep trying to break the unix way and convince us they're awesome. No, I don't need or want *kit, groups exist for something. No, applications that do magic stuff with dbus and xml (and I like xml) on the users back and hide how X work aren't a good thing(tm). Finally, Gentoo's init system is and will likely be for a long time openrc, so stop trying to push crazy or experimental init systems - most with a seemingly poor design and unable to do what an init system needs to do (start and stop services). I fully agree with you here! I always considered systems with just one big / as badly designed. It's simply not the unix way. Sure it makes some things easier in the first place. But that does not mean that it is a better technical solution. -Marc -- 8AAC 5F46 83B4 DB70 8317 3723 296C 6CCA 35A6 4134 pgprJi4jLKHcH.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
* Pacho Ramos schrieb am 01.08.11 um 13:19 Uhr: El lun, 01-08-2011 a las 13:12 +0200, Marc Schiffbauer escribió: [...] * /usr/portage can get very huge and is often written to. With / and /usr being on the same FS you really want to have /usr/portage on a seperate FS then I am sure there are some other reasons too. Just my 2¢ -Marc Having /usr/portage on a different partition will still be supported if I understood correctly (at least, it still works fine for me even having the rest of /usr under / partition) yes. My point was, that if you have a separate /usr you may be ok with no seperate /usr/portage -Marc -- 8AAC 5F46 83B4 DB70 8317 3723 296C 6CCA 35A6 4134 pgpj9onqzaKEv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
W dniu 01.08.2011 13:12, Marc Schiffbauer pisze: * Samuli Suominen schrieb am 01.08.11 um 09:23 Uhr: On 07/31/2011 05:23 PM, Michał Górny wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:55:23 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: I dislike the IUSE=+static some packages are currently doing to workaround this, instead of moving the needed shared libs to / I dislike the idea of pciutils and usbutils database(s) in non-standard location in / to keep udev working I dislike the idea of moving libglib-2.0, libdbus-1, libdbus-glib-1, and couple of dozen more libs to / I dislike the idea of maintaining and keeping track of the files in / using files from /usr. Does any of the PMs have check for this, like NEEDED entries? I can imagine this getting past the maintainers easily otherwise Most likely still not seeing the full picture here, and just scratching the surface... Despite that, I don't have any strong opinion on any of this, just need to know if I should start moving the files over Honestly, I'd rather see system libs and apps being moved to /usr rather than the opposite. IMO the benefit of getting a clear tree is greater than benefits of having separate fs for 'system' and 'non-system' packages which actually tend to randomly depend one on another. that's my impression now too since nobody has managed to provide useful case for separate /usr, or they have been very vague like adding 1+1 on / and /usr filesystem sizes and counting the risk of corrupted filesystem from that (one word: backup) and even then they can go with dracut and have the initramfs mount the /usr before init dracut with it's externsive modules covers the other mentioned cases too I'm responding to this particular mail cause it's last in queue and because it replicates things already mentioned before. I am a zeleous follower of having seperate /usr partition, thus seeing moot arguments that goes in favour of my case is pretty annoying. * For example if a filesystem fills 100%. Imagine your /usr is 100% full by accident. Thats bs, cause / can fill out even when you have /usr seperate. Even faster cause usually you've got very small / like 1Gb. You miss one thing that accidentally writes to / and you're as much toasted. * IMO its a good idea to seperate mostly static filesystems from those with many writes How mering / and /usr increase that? What prevents you having separate partition for heavy write areas inside /usr ? * Some people want a read-only /usr Yes, that's only reasonable argument here. * /usr/portage can get very huge and is often written to. With / and /usr being on the same FS you really want to have /usr/portage on a seperate FS then Even with separate /usr it's good to have separate partition for /usr/portage. You can have partition with small blocks and large no. of inodes this way. How does that prevents merging / and /usr ? Cheers, Kacper signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
El lun, 01-08-2011 a las 13:30 +0200, Marc Schiffbauer escribió: * Pacho Ramos schrieb am 01.08.11 um 13:19 Uhr: El lun, 01-08-2011 a las 13:12 +0200, Marc Schiffbauer escribió: [...] * /usr/portage can get very huge and is often written to. With / and /usr being on the same FS you really want to have /usr/portage on a seperate FS then I am sure there are some other reasons too. Just my 2¢ -Marc Having /usr/portage on a different partition will still be supported if I understood correctly (at least, it still works fine for me even having the rest of /usr under / partition) yes. My point was, that if you have a separate /usr you may be ok with no seperate /usr/portage -Marc Well, I guess it depends on every administrator :-), for example in my case I use a separate partition for it to have it mounted without notail reiserfs option (as tail is slower in normal conditions), allowing me to spend around 300 MB on it instead of 3,5G. That way, I would have it in a separate partition even having /usr on a separate one. But this is probably a bit off-topic :-) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
* Kacper Kowalik schrieb am 01.08.11 um 13:32 Uhr: I'm responding to this particular mail cause it's last in queue and because it replicates things already mentioned before. I am a zeleous follower of having seperate /usr partition, thus seeing moot arguments that goes in favour of my case is pretty annoying. * For example if a filesystem fills 100%. Imagine your /usr is 100% full by accident. Thats bs, cause / can fill out even when you have /usr seperate. Even faster cause usually you've got very small / like 1Gb. You miss one thing that accidentally writes to / and you're as much toasted. The point is that /usr/* has much more load and changes than / alone. ANd a full /usr is much more common than a full / if it is seperated. * IMO its a good idea to seperate mostly static filesystems from those with many writes How mering / and /usr increase that? What prevents you having separate partition for heavy write areas inside /usr ? Nothing prevents me. But just having /usr seperat is much easier to maintain. And well, the FHS clearly allows a sepearte /usr. Everything that is required to boot belongs to / until other filesystems get mounted. * Some people want a read-only /usr Yes, that's only reasonable argument here. * /usr/portage can get very huge and is often written to. With / and /usr being on the same FS you really want to have /usr/portage on a seperate FS then Even with separate /usr it's good to have separate partition for /usr/portage. You can have partition with small blocks and large no. of inodes this way. How does that prevents merging / and /usr ? I agree with you here. My point was that with a seperate /usr you can go well without seperate /usr/portage where you cannot without. -Marc PS,OT: /usr/portage always seemed special to me. Would'nt /var/lib/portage be a better place for it? -- 8AAC 5F46 83B4 DB70 8317 3723 296C 6CCA 35A6 4134 pgpt1PN13XRAO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 08/01/2011 02:32 PM, Kacper Kowalik wrote: W dniu 01.08.2011 13:12, Marc Schiffbauer pisze: * Samuli Suominen schrieb am 01.08.11 um 09:23 Uhr: On 07/31/2011 05:23 PM, Michał Górny wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:55:23 +0300 [ .. ] I am a zeleous follower of having seperate /usr partition, thus seeing moot arguments that goes in favour of my case is pretty annoying. need to have a verifiable reason in order to block a feature that would add, not remove, functionality. trying to find an right answer to wrong question, and preventing what could be progress for selfish reasons can be annoying too. that is, in addition to the hatemail with no actual point in them. * Some people want a read-only /usr Yes, that's only reasonable argument here. see $subject, ... without proper initramfs using a separate /usr would still be possible read-only, with an initramfs created by dracut Cheers, Kacper
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 08/01/2011 03:25 PM, Samuli Suominen wrote: On 08/01/2011 02:32 PM, Kacper Kowalik wrote: W dniu 01.08.2011 13:12, Marc Schiffbauer pisze: * Samuli Suominen schrieb am 01.08.11 um 09:23 Uhr: On 07/31/2011 05:23 PM, Michał Górny wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:55:23 +0300 [ .. ] I am a zeleous follower of having seperate /usr partition, thus seeing moot arguments that goes in favour of my case is pretty annoying. need to have a verifiable reason in order to block a feature that would add, not remove, functionality. trying to find an right answer to wrong question, and preventing what could be progress for selfish reasons can be annoying too. that is, in addition to the hatemail with no actual point in them. just to clarify, that wasn't in anyway for you, or anyone in particular... * Some people want a read-only /usr Yes, that's only reasonable argument here. see $subject, ... without proper initramfs using a separate /usr would still be possible read-only, with an initramfs created by dracut http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Example_F15 Provide a way of mounting /usr read-only and share it between multiple hosts to save maintenance and space. There is no way to reliably bring up a modern system with an empty /usr, there are two alternatives to fix it: copy /usr back to the rootfs or use an initramfs which can hide the split-off from the system. Historically /bin, /sbin, /lib had the purpose to contain the utilities to mount /usr. This role can now be taken by the initramfs. Because the initramfs knows, where to find the root partition (which includes /etc), it can parse /etc/fstab and other configuration files and mount /usr before it finally switches the root partition and executes /usr/bin/init. From this point on init mounts the remaining partitions in /etc/fstab and the system starts as usual. Cheers, Kacper
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:45:26 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: There is no way to reliably bring up a modern system with an empty /usr, there are two alternatives to fix it: copy /usr back to the rootfs or use an initramfs which can hide the split-off from the system. To be clear here: by modern system they mean one that's running dbus, systemd, ConsoleKit, Gnome etc. -- Ciaran McCreesh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
* Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto schrieb am 01.08.11 um 11:19 Uhr: I agree with Eray. Furthermore, please stop trying to reverse the game. It's those that want to break existing policies and conventions that have to justify why they want to do that, not those that want to keep using what has worked for years. I wouldn't call the current static -workarounds, and files from / using files from /usr, neither a clean solution or working The separation is unnecessary maintaince burden for something that has maintaince free replacement You may not need or like it, but I want to be able to use partition schemes like the following without needing to use an initramfs: Sorry for dismissing the lines below that : mark then. Feel free to ignore me, no offense taken, but I'll be disappointed if you won't provide a reasoning for resisting part of the solution Also, desktop users that don't split the /usr path might not like the stress that /usr/portage will add to the / partition - not to talk about the size and inode constraints. Good point, so handbook will need a patch for /usr/portage partition recommendation after the fact I'm growing tired of how complex and over-designed desktop technologies that hide stuff from the users keep trying to break the unix way and convince us they're awesome. No, I don't need or want *kit, groups exist for something. No, applications that do magic stuff with dbus and xml (and I like xml) on the users back and hide how X work aren't a good thing(tm). Then one should do something about it, like providing an alternative or at very least, provide upstreams with patches for making the new stacks optional Finally, Gentoo's init system is and will likely be for a long time openrc, so stop trying to push crazy or experimental init systems - most with a seemingly poor design and unable to do what an init system needs to do (start and stop services). This isn't about systemd, but indeed it will solve one compability obstacle for them too. No harm there.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:10:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: This isn't about systemd, but indeed it will solve one compability obstacle for them too. No harm there. Right, it's about the Gnome operating system, of which systemd is but one strongly coupled part. -- Ciaran McCreesh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:10:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: * Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto schrieb am 01.08.11 um 11:19 Uhr: I agree with Eray. Furthermore, please stop trying to reverse the game. It's those that want to break existing policies and conventions that have to justify why they want to do that, not those that want to keep using what has worked for years. I wouldn't call the current static -workarounds, and files from / using files from /usr, neither a clean solution or working Not to mention there are no 'libexec' nor 'share' directories in rootfs which means files get randomly misplaced. And I don't really think that introducing new directories in / is a good solution. One thing we should consider as well is /opt. It seems like moving data from it into /usr should be a good idea too. This is also annoying to separate /usr users wanting to have a small rootfs -- as they either have to hack /opt out of rootfs or introduce just an another filesystem for it. -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, 1 Aug 2011 13:30:37 +0200 Marc Schiffbauer msch...@gentoo.org wrote: * Pacho Ramos schrieb am 01.08.11 um 13:19 Uhr: Having /usr/portage on a different partition will still be supported if I understood correctly (at least, it still works fine for me even having the rest of /usr under / partition) yes. My point was, that if you have a separate /usr you may be ok with no seperate /usr/portage Don't really think so. /usr/portage is a very specific fs, and it's better to always keep it separated. That's one thing which can be restored with a simple 'emerge --sync'. -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 08/01/2011 07:10 AM, Samuli Suominen wrote: * Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto schrieb am 01.08.11 um 11:19 Uhr: I agree with Eray. Furthermore, please stop trying to reverse the game. It's those that want to break existing policies and conventions that have to justify why they want to do that, not those that want to keep using what has worked for years. I wouldn't call the current static -workarounds, and files from / using files from /usr, neither a clean solution or working The separation is unnecessary maintaince burden for something that has maintaince free replacement Right. The root problem at the core of this whole discussion is that separating / and /usr is really a dependency satisfaction problem that requires maintenance. It seems absurd to manage this kind of dependency problem by hand when we can use the package manager to do it. For example, we could have packages that install into / set something like PROPERTIES=available-when-init-starts (of course we'd use a shorter name), and the package manager would then be able to trigger a QA warning if one of these packages depends on a package that does not have PROPERTIES=available-when-init-starts set. -- Thanks, Zac
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Mon, Aug 01, 2011 at 12:55:02PM -0700, Zac Medico wrote: On 08/01/2011 07:10 AM, Samuli Suominen wrote: * Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto schrieb am 01.08.11 um 11:19 Uhr: I agree with Eray. Furthermore, please stop trying to reverse the game. It's those that want to break existing policies and conventions that have to justify why they want to do that, not those that want to keep using what has worked for years. I wouldn't call the current static -workarounds, and files from / using files from /usr, neither a clean solution or working The separation is unnecessary maintaince burden for something that has maintaince free replacement Right. The root problem at the core of this whole discussion is that separating / and /usr is really a dependency satisfaction problem that requires maintenance. It seems absurd to manage this kind of dependency problem by hand when we can use the package manager to do it. For example, we could have packages that install into / set something like PROPERTIES=available-when-init-starts (of course we'd use a shorter name), and the package manager would then be able to trigger a QA warning if one of these packages depends on a package that does not have PROPERTIES=available-when-init-starts set. RESTRICT=limit-to-init is a bit more inline w/ our norms. Easy enough set of checks to add either way. ~brian
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Le 31/07/11 à 04:40, Samuli a tapoté : If there's any option that allows the use of a separate /usr partition without an initramfs, then let's explore it. I don't feel like having to use an initramfs just because I want a small / without /usr on it. The message is really missing all the context without explanation for WHY you want it. System reactivity. I have an old setup with multiple partitions on multiple hard-drives mounted on multiple system directories. When the system is busy, it is responsiveness.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 07/31/2011 10:20 AM, netfab wrote: Le 31/07/11 à 04:40, Samuli a tapoté : If there's any option that allows the use of a separate /usr partition without an initramfs, then let's explore it. I don't feel like having to use an initramfs just because I want a small / without /usr on it. The message is really missing all the context without explanation for WHY you want it. System reactivity. I have an old setup with multiple partitions on multiple hard-drives mounted on multiple system directories. And why is both using an initramfs or migrating /usr to / an problem? When the system is busy, it is responsiveness. I can guess. Suboptimal ordering of disks per speed and usage? Or what was your point?
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sun, 31 Jul 2011 04:40:33 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Can we discuss both options? If there's any option that allows the use of a separate /usr partition without an initramfs, then let's explore it. I don't feel like having to use an initramfs just because I want a small / without /usr on it. The message is really missing all the context without explanation for WHY you want it. (As an interested non-developer) My own rationale is as follows: 1. I do regular backups of /home. I would prefer to have them run in the background while I continue using the system, so the filesystem won't be idle. For consistency, that means I want /home in LVM, so I can create a snapshot and back that up instead—it will be at least as consistent as an instantaneous power failure would be, which things tend to be pretty good at recovering from (both the filesystem and anything above it that uses a journal of some sort, like sqlite). 2. /home is big. /usr is big. When I first install a system, it's not clear exactly how big each one will be. It's really nice to be able to share space between them without any manual intervention, which is what happens if you put both on the same filesystem. Thus, if /home is in LVM, then /usr must also be in LVM, on the same LV. 3. Booting with / on LVM requires an initramfs. It's much easier to not use an initramfs than to use one. So I keep / outside LVM as a small ordinary partition, typically ~250MB (no need for a separate /boot partition in this case). That said, I hadn't ever actually noticed that putting /usr on a separate filesystem was broken in the first place. It's served me well enough. I'd just like it if it would continue to do so. If I have no choice I suppose I will have to switch to using an initramfs, but I prefer not having to poke the early boot sequences of machines it's a PITA to get physical access to that have been working fine for years. Chris -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAk41E38ACgkQXUF6hOTGP7emFACfYeoq2vSxk8B1I+URk5ohGbvJ soYAoJZ1p2cm4IjoEFvdfzkQNlxERCv1 =yZkv -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Le 31/07/11 à 11:15, Samuli a tapoté : System reactivity. I have an old setup with multiple partitions on multiple hard-drives mounted on multiple system directories. And why is both using an initramfs [...] an problem? No problem for me. If I have to do it, I will. In fact I already use an initramfs for uvesafb and v86d [1]. I was simply answer you on WHY I want a separate /usr partition. And why is both [...] migrating /usr to / an problem? This depend on your setup. Mine is basically like this : - /tmp and /var are still on the root partition. - everything else have their own partition, this includes : - official dirs : /usr /portage/trees /portage/distpack /home /opt - custom dirs : /data and raid arrays. For example, when running emerge -uDN world, /var is intensively used during compilation. If /usr is on a separate partition on another hard drive, launching multiple applications during the system update will necessarily be faster than if /usr is on /. When the system is busy, it is responsiveness. I can guess. Suboptimal ordering of disks per speed and usage? Yes. [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/uvesafb/
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 07/31/2011 04:56 AM, William Hubbs wrote: On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 04:40:33AM +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: On 07/31/2011 03:59 AM, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote: On 30-07-2011 22:17, William Hubbs wrote: On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:27:27AM +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? There are actually two options for us according to upstream. One is the one you are talking about -- mounting /usr from an initramfs before / is mounted. The other is to mount local file systems, if setups are simple enough, before we start udev. I could set this one up easily enough just by moving localmount to the boot runlevel. Can we discuss both options? If there's any option that allows the use of a separate /usr partition without an initramfs, then let's explore it. I don't feel like having to use an initramfs just because I want a small / without /usr on it. The message is really missing all the context without explanation for WHY you want it. Here is a good argument for supporting this. http://tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy/install-partitioning.html The documentation seems to lack any arguments, bad or good, for the separate /usr issue. Any chance you could highlight it out? You can hose your system easier with one big file system with / and /usr combined than you can with multiple partitions. Too vague. Did you mean to compare filesystem size with the amount of errors and it's capability to recover? To what effect, and same for every filesystem type? Details please. :-/ - Samuli
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
W dniu 30.07.2011 15:55, Samuli Suominen pisze: On 07/30/2011 01:46 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:27:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? It's important to consider the timeline here. Separate /usr was accidentally broken by a sudden increase in dependencies from base system packages to desktopy things. It was only later that certain people decided that oh, separate /usr is a bad idea anyway, and they did so because they couldn't figure out how to fix the mess they'd caused. This is very much a case of carelessly letting the horse escape and then trying to convince everyone that no-one needs a horse anyway... Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? That covers headless/diskless clusters and I suspect many people still do that. Cheers, Kacper signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:55:23 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: I dislike the IUSE=+static some packages are currently doing to workaround this, instead of moving the needed shared libs to / I dislike the idea of pciutils and usbutils database(s) in non-standard location in / to keep udev working I dislike the idea of moving libglib-2.0, libdbus-1, libdbus-glib-1, and couple of dozen more libs to / I dislike the idea of maintaining and keeping track of the files in / using files from /usr. Does any of the PMs have check for this, like NEEDED entries? I can imagine this getting past the maintainers easily otherwise Most likely still not seeing the full picture here, and just scratching the surface... Despite that, I don't have any strong opinion on any of this, just need to know if I should start moving the files over Honestly, I'd rather see system libs and apps being moved to /usr rather than the opposite. IMO the benefit of getting a clear tree is greater than benefits of having separate fs for 'system' and 'non-system' packages which actually tend to randomly depend one on another. What's the point of having shared /usr if you need to keep /bin, /lib, /sbin in sync anyway? And considering the above, the number of files to keep separate synced is growing, and thus our potential / gets bigger and bigger. -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 30 July 2011 08:27, Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? I reported this to bugzilla[1] in June. There was no resolution, but the discussion was interesting and worth reading. To summarize, changing the handbook would be a start, but it doesn't solve the larger problem, and separate /usr will be supported for as long as it is practical to do so. I don't know how to resolve the situation, but I'm relieved to hear that other people care. [1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=372317
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 3:27 AM, Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? My feeling is that we should still consider this a supported configuration, so any warning should be along the lines of note that we're still having issues making this work properly so be careful for now. Or, better still explain how to configure the initramfs to mount /usr. I actually run this configuration without an initramfs and haven't had issues so far. If you want to run with a small root partition I don't see much alternative. Does the genkernel initramfs mount /usr currently? Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:27:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? It's important to consider the timeline here. Separate /usr was accidentally broken by a sudden increase in dependencies from base system packages to desktopy things. It was only later that certain people decided that oh, separate /usr is a bad idea anyway, and they did so because they couldn't figure out how to fix the mess they'd caused. This is very much a case of carelessly letting the horse escape and then trying to convince everyone that no-one needs a horse anyway... -- Ciaran McCreesh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 07/30/2011 01:46 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:27:27 +0300 Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? It's important to consider the timeline here. Separate /usr was accidentally broken by a sudden increase in dependencies from base system packages to desktopy things. It was only later that certain people decided that oh, separate /usr is a bad idea anyway, and they did so because they couldn't figure out how to fix the mess they'd caused. This is very much a case of carelessly letting the horse escape and then trying to convince everyone that no-one needs a horse anyway... Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? I dislike the documentation not being clear on separate /usr, that it should only be used if you *really* need it due to the potential problems I dislike the IUSE=+static some packages are currently doing to workaround this, instead of moving the needed shared libs to / I dislike the idea of pciutils and usbutils database(s) in non-standard location in / to keep udev working I dislike the idea of moving libglib-2.0, libdbus-1, libdbus-glib-1, and couple of dozen more libs to / I dislike the idea of maintaining and keeping track of the files in / using files from /usr. Does any of the PMs have check for this, like NEEDED entries? I can imagine this getting past the maintainers easily otherwise Most likely still not seeing the full picture here, and just scratching the surface... Despite that, I don't have any strong opinion on any of this, just need to know if I should start moving the files over
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? I dislike the documentation not being clear on separate /usr, that it should only be used if you *really* need it due to the potential problems Well, I ended up that way from following the official documentation the better part of a decade ago: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86+raid+lvm2-quickinstall.xml Sure, I guess I could try to move root to the lvm as well to expand it enough and switch over to genkernel. You know, maybe a way around all of this would be for all of the various distros and major FOSS packages to get together and come up with some kind of standard for what goes in what directory. Maybe we could call it something like the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. Then we don't have to argue on mailing lists about whether it is appropriate to rely on file in /usr during boot. It seems like the proper solution is for all packages in the tree to be FHS-compliant, either because we patched them and bug upstream about it, or because we exclude them. That said, there is little point if we're the only distro doing this. How many packages are we actually talking about? Is there any kind of consensus in the FOSS community beyond Gentoo that FHS has had its day? What is the policy for other distros? Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Samuli Suominen schrieb: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? If you have / encrypted, then you can leave /usr unencrypted as it contains no secrets. Also /usr can remain mounted read-only most of the time, so there is a reduced chance of accidental corruption. I don't know the number of users who might want this, and I imagine it is difficult to count them. I dislike the idea of moving libglib-2.0, libdbus-1, libdbus-glib-1, and couple of dozen more libs to / If you say that /usr must be on the same filesystem as /, then there is no real reason to not just make a symlink /usr - . Best regards, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 07/30/2011 05:28 PM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote: Samuli Suominen schrieb: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? If you have / encrypted, then you can leave /usr unencrypted as it contains no secrets. Also /usr can remain mounted read-only most of the time, so there is a reduced chance of accidental corruption. I don't know the number of users who might want this, and I imagine it is difficult to count them. That is still possible, since separate /usr would still be an option if it's mounted from the initramfs before init. Quote from #gentoo-dev today: 11:39 @aidecoe dracut has module fstab-sys. You might check this out to mount additional stuff before switching to root.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: 11:39 @aidecoe dracut has module fstab-sys. You might check this out to mount additional stuff before switching to root. If we want to make /usr required on boot we should build this capability into genkernel. Or, we should have genkernel invoke dracut, or just make dracut the official initramfs tool and document it accordingly. Or, at the very least we should update our lvm+raid howto to actually work in a supported fashion - probably some of the things above in the process. I'm not completely opposed to just ditching the FHS if its day has passed, but this isn't something we should consider lightly and we should at least document the proper way to configure a Gentoo system that has almost all of its data on lvm+raid. Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Excerpts from Rich Freeman's message of 2011-07-30 17:10:14 +0200: On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Samuli Suominen ssuomi...@gentoo.org wrote: 11:39 @aidecoe dracut has module fstab-sys. You might check this out to mount additional stuff before switching to root. If we want to make /usr required on boot we should build this capability into genkernel. Or, we should have genkernel invoke dracut, It's on my responsibilities list and a progress has been made. I'm currently overloaded since few months, but it is eventually going to be. (It's not so simple as just invoking dracut. Integration is a bit more complicated.) or just make dracut the official initramfs tool and document it accordingly. It will take some time to finally integrate dracut into genkernel, but making dracut more official tool until this time is possible to accomplish in the nearest future. Although first we need to introduce /run into stable baselayout. If you all decide on the matter and the way through dracut is chosen, just let me know and I'll try stabilize and write docs about dracut as soon as possible. Despite it's easily possible to workaround the problem with initramfs, it's really bad issue that the world is breaking FHS instead of designing something new. (Yes, I know it's so big deal that's impossible… but… doh…) -- Amadeusz Żołnowski PGP key fpr: C700 CEDE 0C18 212E 49DA 4653 F013 4531 E1DB FAB5 signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Saturday 30 July 2011 14:55:23 Samuli Suominen wrote: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? From /etc/conf.d/fsck, seems like a reason to keep the / FS as small as possible to reduce the amount of time spent waiting during boot: # fsck_shutdown causes fsck to trigger during shutdown as well as startup. # The end result of this is that if any periodic non-root filesystem checks are # scheduled, under normal circumstances the actual check will happen during # shutdown rather than at next boot. # This is useful when periodic filesystem checks are causing undesirable # delays at startup, but such delays at shutdown are acceptable. fsck_shutdown=YES
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 1:20 PM, David Leverton levert...@googlemail.com wrote: On Saturday 30 July 2011 14:55:23 Samuli Suominen wrote: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? From /etc/conf.d/fsck, seems like a reason to keep the / FS as small as possible to reduce the amount of time spent waiting during boot: Well, that only really has a benefit if the system can do something useful between the time that root is mounted and /usr is mounted, which is probably a no. In any case, I see this whole situation as being a bit of laziness - individual packages are just breaking the rules rather than trying to reform them. However, if this is the way of the universe I'd be fine with just updating our docs and tools to handle /usr mounted by initramfs. Almost all other distros use initramfs 100% of the time - Gentoo is a bit unusual in that I'd say a good chunk of our users don't use one at all. Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:38:55 -0400 Rich Freeman ri...@gentoo.org wrote: From /etc/conf.d/fsck, seems like a reason to keep the / FS as small as possible to reduce the amount of time spent waiting during boot: Well, that only really has a benefit if the system can do something useful between the time that root is mounted and /usr is mounted, which is probably a no. Bring up networking? -- Ciaran McCreesh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Saturday 30 July 2011 18:38:55 Rich Freeman wrote: On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 1:20 PM, David Leverton From /etc/conf.d/fsck, seems like a reason to keep the / FS as small as possible to reduce the amount of time spent waiting during boot: Well, that only really has a benefit if the system can do something useful between the time that root is mounted and /usr is mounted, which is probably a no. Not quite sure what you mean there... I meant that OpenRC lets you move non-/ fscks to shutdown, but you still have to wait for / to be checked during boot whenever it's due, so it's good to have it small so you don't have to wait too long.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:28:54 +0200 Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn chith...@gentoo.org wrote: Samuli Suominen schrieb: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? If you have / encrypted, then you can leave /usr unencrypted as it contains no secrets. That's doing things upside-down. You should encrypt the data needing encryption, not the other way. This usually means /home which is separate more often than /usr. Also /usr can remain mounted read-only most of the time, so there is a reduced chance of accidental corruption. I don't know the number of users who might want this, and I imagine it is difficult to count them. Is this actually possible now? Last time I tried doing things like this X11 failed to set keyboard mappings trying to store compiled ones in /usr. I dislike the idea of moving libglib-2.0, libdbus-1, libdbus-glib-1, and couple of dozen more libs to / If you say that /usr must be on the same filesystem as /, then there is no real reason to not just make a symlink /usr - . That's a joke, right? -- Best regards, Michał Górny signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Certainly a good point - you don't want to spoil a SSD-RAID-set's performance by encrypting /usr but there is surely a strong need to encrypt /etc and thus /, which has a rather neglectable impact on performance of a system. I'd even say that in a lot of environments splitting / and /usr is more common and useful than putting them on the same FS. Just accepting the need to have / and /usr on the same FS because packages are severly broken and badly designed should not really an argument to consider. Kind Regards -Sven P.S.: In this respect I second Ciaran's POV and what he said. On Sat, July 30, 2011 16:28, ChÃ-Thanh Christopher Nguyá» n wrote: Samuli Suominen schrieb: Someone mentioned NFS mount on /usr. Do we have other reasons? How many users that might be? If you have / encrypted, then you can leave /usr unencrypted as it contains no secrets. Also /usr can remain mounted read-only most of the time, so there is a reduced chance of accidental corruption. I don't know the number of users who might want this, and I imagine it is difficult to count them. Best regards, ChÃ-Thanh Christopher Nguyá» n
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
Michał Górny schrieb: If you have / encrypted, then you can leave /usr unencrypted as it contains no secrets. That's doing things upside-down. You should encrypt the data needing encryption, not the other way. This usually means /home which is separate more often than /usr. That is precisely what is done here. On a typical system I assume that secrets can be in /etc, /home and /var. Encrypting /usr might not give you a security gain and just consume resources. Also /usr can remain mounted read-only most of the time, so there is a reduced chance of accidental corruption. I don't know the number of users who might want this, and I imagine it is difficult to count them. Is this actually possible now? Last time I tried doing things like this X11 failed to set keyboard mappings trying to store compiled ones in /usr. I have not seen any machine running X have read-only /usr yet. Maybe it is something that could be investigated. If I have time, I'll experiment what happens when I do a read-only bind-mount of /usr on itself. If you say that /usr must be on the same filesystem as /, then there is no real reason to not just make a symlink /usr - . That's a joke, right? There are folks who seriously take this into consideration. I don't necessarily agree with them, though. Best regards, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:27:27AM +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? There are actually two options for us according to upstream. One is the one you are talking about -- mounting /usr from an initramfs before / is mounted. The other is to mount local file systems, if setups are simple enough, before we start udev. I could set this one up easily enough just by moving localmount to the boot runlevel. Can we discuss both options? William pgpN2p3tiRKtT.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 30-07-2011 22:17, William Hubbs wrote: On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:27:27AM +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? There are actually two options for us according to upstream. One is the one you are talking about -- mounting /usr from an initramfs before / is mounted. The other is to mount local file systems, if setups are simple enough, before we start udev. I could set this one up easily enough just by moving localmount to the boot runlevel. Can we discuss both options? If there's any option that allows the use of a separate /usr partition without an initramfs, then let's explore it. I don't feel like having to use an initramfs just because I want a small / without /usr on it. As others have said, having /usr as a separate partition worked for years until some people started trying to shove bloat on everyone's systems and then they want us to believe that having /usr as a separate partition is stupid. William - -- Regards, Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / KDE / Elections / RelEng -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJONKjzAAoJEC8ZTXQF1qEPLjEP/i8oGv6aP3RH1SokVG5llfuq j0pckRZOTcqcHl4CM7ZfvYvixLR8XZK1ZSRk3DnysxUQCrI6fNvYr1/8EqJUIB9j wM5XRshkyOwh8VpwdTdd/y0XhcE1MaAqwXOXOO2FrnuH6cd6RR0YFbeVVbL62kni PdTV+DNY2Wbo1fn8xAY0lRANMqghNXPGBK4/5kYuwCBME1xaV/cRkbDrtUnznWbq dsCshhm5m2ertOHuRZzDQfpUOlS0J5RiE8zvAqyasC1stT3TcegcnTL/M8zxOoF8 jxcPJCIsVx/WfKrDXT9qgSOo9/E2X182dLN/6br2prV/Yvjb0nMcC1orsueHDnVo WHvYCEZ7ZlLIMw6boiWycqzRcxSrz24XQLufyWwcYUpWdxHmToNPW6dOQvM+ZcNz QAOs3fAR7NinGHMRkl9AehCbK1PiKBBmiZU/KXcCffBabWsUuwWEwhxz0BNGvLgZ 62NgPM1HbF3+azq+mqre2tp2mu3s4cVUiu12Zf5SBXTJP98FCIX9Q+vpypoQGhjv R1JtlozfOunPYnLaEBT0pz/Rev9HrdxIpslKcQug6N3u/1Z0+COUSEatr9xJDSOb fXD6c+Cm4zFcJx1hiZ2+qyidhcX57uC+2Y6GIVGhHKOBwJSFna0DGsQw8iMbNk8Y OQ2x6i+JYAqyUKZdJLP3 =bxvJ -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On 07/31/2011 03:59 AM, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote: On 30-07-2011 22:17, William Hubbs wrote: On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:27:27AM +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? There are actually two options for us according to upstream. One is the one you are talking about -- mounting /usr from an initramfs before / is mounted. The other is to mount local file systems, if setups are simple enough, before we start udev. I could set this one up easily enough just by moving localmount to the boot runlevel. Can we discuss both options? If there's any option that allows the use of a separate /usr partition without an initramfs, then let's explore it. I don't feel like having to use an initramfs just because I want a small / without /usr on it. The message is really missing all the context without explanation for WHY you want it.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Warn users not to do separate /usr partition without proper initramfs in the handbook?
On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 04:40:33AM +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: On 07/31/2011 03:59 AM, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote: On 30-07-2011 22:17, William Hubbs wrote: On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:27:27AM +0300, Samuli Suominen wrote: Since running separate /usr without mounting it from initramfs on top of / before init is and has been broken with udev for a long time now[1][2][3] [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364235 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#Move_all_to_.2Fusr [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken Can we warn users about not doing the separate /usr mistake in the handbook? There are actually two options for us according to upstream. One is the one you are talking about -- mounting /usr from an initramfs before / is mounted. The other is to mount local file systems, if setups are simple enough, before we start udev. I could set this one up easily enough just by moving localmount to the boot runlevel. Can we discuss both options? If there's any option that allows the use of a separate /usr partition without an initramfs, then let's explore it. I don't feel like having to use an initramfs just because I want a small / without /usr on it. The message is really missing all the context without explanation for WHY you want it. Here is a good argument for supporting this. http://tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy/install-partitioning.html You can hose your system easier with one big file system with / and /usr combined than you can with multiple partitions. William pgpeValFVSV3M.pgp Description: PGP signature
