[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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