On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 12:53:24PM -0500, Zachary Harris wrote:
> Throwing my own two cents in: as far as Debian itself goes, I think
> this distro ('stable', in particular) has a reputation of being a solid,
> stable, rock of confidence that others can build off of and deviate
> from. The center should hold, so that if something goes wrong in the
> branches, the problem can hopefully be localized as quickly and
> conveniently as possible.
At the same time, this does not mean that Debian should never change.
Do you have any concrete answers to the questions posed?
Merging / and /usr (in either direction) would always result in a
system with compatibility links. It's not like anything would be
broken by the change--all the paths available now would continue to
be available.
> I could be wrong, but my (admittedly stereotyped) impression of the
> standard use cases is that if you've got someone who DOES want to mount
> /usr separately from "/" (e.g. over NFS or because of a selectively
> encrypted LVM), such person is more likely wanting to do so in "pure
> Debian", rather than, say, in Ubuntu.
This is a bit beside the point. People keep bringing up mounting /usr
over NFS. No one to date has provided a sensible use case for it.
This is because "old timers" (or whoever) have failed to notice a
fundamental flaw: *package management does not work with a shared /usr*.
On a Debian there are really only two categories for partitions:
those under the control of the package manager, and those which
are not (user data etc.). Does it make sense to split package-managed
files over multiple partitions? (other than /var)
This is *the* key point. Under a package managed distribution /
and /usr are part of a *managed whole*. They can't exist separately,
even if they are on different partitions, mounted over NFS, or
whatever. It's fine that such things /work/, but we do need to
question /why/ one would do such a thing. If you're mounting /usr
over NFS, the real question is "why aren't you mounting / over NFS,
which also then includes /usr?". Mounting /usr separately makes no
sense *at all*.
The same argument applies to encryption. / and /usr both contain a
selection of programs, libraries etc. If you're encrypting one, why
would you not encrypt all of it? And the same for mounting read-only.
The question that needs answering is this:
"what are the reasons, today, for a separate /usr?"
Excluding "historical practice". What real function does it have?
Does it have any reason to continue to exist?
And regarding the LSB: I checked, and it would be entirely compliant
for Debian to merge the two.
> Enforce a
> policy that anything being put into /sbin or /bin must pass the "ldd
> test". If a dependency is in /usr/lib then negotiations have to be made
> to reach an agreement to either "downgrade" the binary to /usr/{s,}bin
> or "upgrade" the library to /lib. (In the case of downgrading the
> binary, you can say that the user of the Debian package bears the
> responsibility to have ensured that the executables he personally
> considers "essential" in his own context were accessible where he would
> need them when he would need them. But the distro itself should take
> responsibility for being CONSISTENT, and thus should not say, "Here's
> something available to you in /sbin---oh, but you can't actually use it
> from there (so to speak).")
The problem here is, can we /be/ consistent? What is one system's
essential package required for bringing up a working system is
someone else's occasionally-used tool that's not important at all.
Yet both might be required to be on the rootfs. We can't be all
things to all people in the current state. But unification /would/
*guarantee* things would always work and be consistent: every
program and library would always be right there on the rootfs.
The status quo is a "best effort". Things sometimes break, and
there's an continuing migration of "essential" packages to the
rootfs. Given that a modern initramfs can mount pretty much any
filesystem, either locally or over a network, what's the *real*
reason for a separate /usr? It's certainly not for any booting-
related reason.
Regards,
Roger
--
.''`. Roger Leigh
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