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Re: /usr/lib vs /usr/libexec



>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net> writes:

    Thomas> You've missed the point.  Split / and /boot, that makes
    Thomas> sense if it's necessary.  Splitting / and /usr does not
    Thomas> make sense.

Bad example.

A better example might be if you want to mount /usr via NFS or some
other network file-system. I have heard people use AFS for this
purpose. I am sure there are other file-systems that could be used.

Yes, there are ways you can mount / via a network file-system:
* NFS Boot code in kernel that auto-configures the network.
* initramfs (anybody written code to do this?)

However, if all you want to do is share /usr between systems,
currently the simplest approach (and the only way I know this is
possible) is if /usr is a separate from /.

For starters, it only requires an extra entry in /etc/fstab. No
changes to the boot structure.

A relevant factor is that some directories (i.e. /etc and /var) cannot
always be shared, but must be available early on in the boot process
(i.e. /etc). So it might make sense to have a local private copy of /,
but have /usr shared.

Yes, this gets a bit messy in places (e.g. keeping /etc, /lib, and
/var synchronized with /usr), but my point is to prove that there
still are benefits in keeping /usr and / split.

The arguments presented hold true of any filesystem that is
complicated enough to require user-level tools to initialize, and for
some reason you don't want to use an initramfs to initialize it. Or if
you want /usr to be shared between computers but don't want to share
all of /.
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>



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