[fhs-discuss] static sharable files

Tollef Fog Heen tfheen at err.no
Tue May 17 05:02:14 PDT 2011


]] Steve Langasek 

Hi,

| On Mon, May 09, 2011 at 09:33:48AM +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
| > I think
| > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
| > is relevant in this context.
| 
| Frankly, this says more about the willingness of certain implementors to
| conform to the FHS than it does about whether the FHS's rules for /usr vs. /
| are broken.
| 
| I find the idea that pulseaudio can't function correctly without /usr on the
| root partition a particularly mirthful assertion.

*shrug*; it's a description of reality today.  Maybe it'd be nice if the
world was different, but it's not.  I think somebody who cares about
/usr-on-a-separate-fs should go out and get the bugs fixed if it should
continue being a supported setup.  If nobody is willing to do the
legwork to ensure it actually works correctly in all cases, I don't
think it should be shown to be a supported option.

[...]

| It's fine that you prefer to put /usr on the same filesystem.  Nevertheless
| there are reasons why, in some circumstances, users will choose not to do
| this.  The FHS has always allowed for this, and there is insufficent
| rationale to break support for this now.

I think the rationale «it will randomly break, because it's not a
well-tested configuration» is reasonable.

| To be clear, I'm *also* in favor of ensuring that /usr as a symlink to / is
| well-supported.  But I'm a user with encrypted / and unencrypted /usr, and
| it matters to me that there is no risk of filesystem corruption causing
| shards of LibreOffice to be shotgunned through my critical system libraries. 
| Oh, and pulseaudio, dbus, plymouth, cups, and NetworkManager all work
| perfectly well for me.

That they work for you just means you are lucky enough to not hit the
race conditions, it does not say anything about whether there are race
conditions or not.  I'd be surprised if everything worked fine if you
put /usr on a file system that took 60s extra to mount, to ensure you
hit more race conditions.  (I could be wrong, though.)

Regards,
-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are


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