On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:02:54 +0800 > Mark David Dumlao <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > That was the original reason for having / and /usr separate, and it >> > dates back to the early 70s. The other reason that stems from that >> > time period is the size of disks we had back then - they were tiny >> > and often a minimal / was all that could really fit on the primary >> > system drive. >> >> I'm sorry, but I just can't let this one go. The reasons are >> backwards. The limitation in free space was the original reason [1] >> why / and /usr were separated. In fact, /usr was supposed to serve the >> same purpose as /home - it was originally a directory for users. It's >> only a quirk of history that served to keep most of the binaries in >> /usr when the home directories were moved elsewhere to /home. >> >> Long story short, Unix, too, has its share of old farts that are >> unwilling to embrace change at anything faster than a glacier's pace. >> Just ask the Plan 9 folks. >> >> [1] >> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html > > Well fair enough. This stuff is becoming more myth than fact as less > and less people are around to remember how it really went. There may > even have been to-ing and fro-ing moving bits around till Ken and > Dennis settled on the eventual outcome in that post. > > Either way, we still agree. A separate /usr is, *for the most part*, a > tradition applied without much understanding of the reason (most > traditions are exactly like this). Most people do not actually need > it.
The sweet irony here is that Poettering - the cause for all this mess - likely understood the logistics and rationale of the / and /usr split better than most of his detractors - I'm pretty sure I landed on that link by starting from one of his systemd tutorial pages, though I can't exactly remember which one. Thankfully, I've never had to maintain systems whose disks were small and low performing enough that it actually mattered to separate / from /usr. -- This email is: [ ] actionable [ ] fyi [x] social Response needed: [ ] yes [x] up to you [ ] no Time-sensitive: [ ] immediate [ ] soon [x] none
