Re: RES: /usr/lib vs /usr/libexec

[Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net>]

Anthony DeRobertis <asd@suespammers.org> writes:

> On May 13, 2005, at 11:28, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote:
>>
>> You said it yourself. Even if your 256MB machine were typical (it's
>> not), the less cache memory you use to cache dentries of /usr/lib,
>> the better (more memory for your apps, or to cache other, more
>> useful stuff).
>
> If you suspect that separating /usr/lib into multiple directories
> will improve performance, please bring reasonable benchmarks, not
> speculation.

I do believe you've missed the point.  Splitting /usr from / helps in
a teeny percentage of cases, and most of the cases where it "helps"
that have been mentioned here, it actually doesn't.  Yet, splitting
/usr/lib, which is grotesquely huge and hard to deal with, is treated
as an impossible thing, needing a great level of proof before it can
be considered.  This is very foolish.

We've been told that /usr is necessary so that the boot partition can
be small.  Of course, the boot loaders generally don't care, and for
the small minority of cases where they do, make a separate /boot
partition.

We've been told that /usr is necessary to allow network sharing.  Of
course, you can network share any directory, not just /usr.  If you
want executables to be shared, then share /bin.  It's not a problem.
I've done it.

We've been told that /usr is necessary because then you reduce the
chance that the system will be hosed from disk corruption.  Of course,
it might seem that the chance of hosage actually now doubles, because
if either of two filesystems die, your system is unusable.  It's also
been suggested that if /usr breaks and / doesn't you can helpfully
repair /usr.  Of course, you can still repair /: you should use a boot
CD, or a repair partition you've set up for that purpose.  This is far
better than setting up / as a double-duty repair partition and live
filesystem.  If you want reliability, this is a very bad way to get
it.

Now if you want /usr, go to it; but it's insane to say that /usr is a
great thing, supported by very weak arguments and nothing so much as
mindless inertia, while libexec is a foolish and pointless thing.

If you are against unnecessary things, then geez, you should be
getting rid of nearly every separate directory.  

Thomas