[fhs-discuss] FHS/LSB Updates
Julian Fagir
gnrp at komkon2.de
Thu Nov 17 11:27:07 UTC 2011
Hi,
> >>> If ed is wanted, perhaps LSB should only include it by reference
> >>> to POSIX, and not explicitly include it in LSB.
> >> vi is often (or always?) placed in /usr/bin, and /usr is on a separate
> >> partition.
> >
> > So.. I don't quite see the connection of ed to vi being in /usr.
> >
> >> There are many scenarios, and they all exclude vi from being in /.
> >
> > Counter-example: openSUSE which ships vim in /bin.
This is no counter-example for that scenario. These scenarios do exist.
What I was talking about: The system should have a minimal set of tools to be
usable when everything else fails.
> Many of the legacy decisions have been made when disk drives were
> expensive and small. I remember being excited when I bought my first
> hard drive: 80MB for the new low price of $600. That was somewhere
> around 1985.
>
> Today, I don't think you can get a new rotational disk drive that is
> less than 250GB (for about $40 to $60). Even thumb drives are 16GB for
> less than $20. The economics of HW today does have an impact on the
> disk layout. What was appropriate in 1990 is not appropriate today. I
> think the FHS should reflect that.
this is not about disk space, this is about usage scenarios.
Having an external (via nfs) /usr does not need to be for disk space reasons,
but for management purposes.
Having an extra filesystem for /usr could be for many reasons, having many
source files there is one of them. The source-building systems like portage,
ports and pkgsrc (though ports is a BSD thing) have many small files, thus
it is better having another inode/block ratio than usual.
Or encrypting /usr, or whatever you want to do with it.
There are many reasons to make /usr an extra partition.
> I have seen discussion about removing /usr/bin completely and putting
> everything on /usr. There are multiple distributions that today say
> that they don't support a separate (or at least a remote) /usr partition.
>
> What the FHS/LSB should be about is to not only set a standard about
> what facilities are available for a product today, but to provide a
> roadmap to what will be available in the future. This means that
> programs that are of marginal use should be deprecated.
>
> In the days when memory is measured in GB and disk in TB, things like vi
> in /bin and vim in /usr/bin is nonsensical. The same can be said for
> the differences between dash and bash.
That's a separate discussion going on, removing /usr completely or requiring
it to be in /bin would change this situation.
> I don't know of any *programs* that rely on ed/at/batch. Sure users can
> and do use them, but do they need to be part of a standard?
With vi and possibly all other editors being on separate partition, / would
be completely without an interactive editor. And there are situations in
which you only have that choice, even on the most modern hardware.
Regards, Julian
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