Re: /usr/etc

[cfm@maine.com]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 02:12:46AM +0200, Yedidya Bar-david wrote:

> Still, I think one of the oldest ideas on which the whole
> Un*x filesystem hierarchy is based is that of sharing /usr,
> and it's a waste that this can't practically be done, with
> any of the Linux distributions I know.
> 

Maybe it's just my inability, but I find sharing even /usr/share
is a PITA.  We do that because we want the docs and man pages 
everywhere to be the same even though, for example, we don't want 
a full tex installation on every machine.  Booting without 
/usr/share mounted means bad time: (/etc/localtime) cron and 
syslog fail.  Nor will mysql even start.  There was a time 
when lprng would not start either.

The worst part though, is that upgrading just a dozen 
machines must be done in a certain sequence; we find it best to
do the server last.  Upgrading more than one machine at a time
creates race conditions in /usr/share and lots of small files
work the NFS hard.  Maybe we are too ambitious: /usr/share/man
and /usr/share/doc might do the trick for us.

cfm


-- 

Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                             cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc         208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
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