[fhs-discuss] static sharable files

Steve Langasek vorlon at debian.org
Tue May 17 09:28:15 PDT 2011


On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 02:02:14PM +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> | 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.

No, it's a description of reality on one particular distribution whose
maintainers have abdicated support for this requirement of the FHS.

Pulseaudio works just fine on Ubuntu with /usr.  If you can point to an
actual problem with this configuration, let me know and I'll be happy to fix
it (and forward the changes to Debian - but presumably not to upstream,
since it's a distribution issue rather than an upstream one).

> 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.

If you can show me what those bugs are, I'll be happy to fix them.  I *have*
fixed bugs with separate-/usr in the past; I'm not aware of any currently.

> | 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.

I disagree with the assertion that it's not well tested.

> | 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.)

I can test this later if you like.  I'm not currently in a rebooting mood.
:)

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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