Re: no deprecation of /usr as a standalone filesystem
Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> writes:
> Le dimanche 31 mai 2009 à 19:43 +0200, Marco d'Itri a écrit :
>> All things considered, I have no immediate plan to push for deprecating
>> a standalone /usr.
>
> Thanks for going back. However, if you think this debate is going to
> come back later, maybe we could ensure that we can remove this support
> later. This starts by encouraging people to use alternate solutions when
> possible, so that we donâ??t hit again the â??I have setups that do thisâ??
> issue in a few years.
>
> Discouraging the use of a separate /usr should start by removing the
> explicit option to mount a partition to /usr in the installer. You could
> still specify it by hand, but that would imply knowing what youâ??re
> doing.
>
>> Some of the arguments mentioned in favour of a standalone /usr are:
>> - NFS: but it's still unclear exactly how this is managed in practice
>> (apparently it requires much handwaving), and there are alternatives
>> like an unionfs or really stateless clients which are probably simpler
>> and better
>
> Indeed, if you want /usr on NFS, you also want / on NFS. Maybe those
> interested in such setups could write a package that makes this easier,
> but everything is already here.
>
>> - LVM and/or RAID: no real reason nowadays to not use these for the root
As long as debian does not provide support for kernel independent non
breaking initramfs support (i.e. not regenerated on every whim and
break) having / outside lvm and no initramfs is a real plus.
>> - mounting it read only: some people obviously like this, but it's
>> hardly something irreplaceable
>
> Again, if people want all of this for /usr, they also want it for /.
> Maybe the policy could make clear that any package not working with a
> read-only / is RC?
You can not mount / nodev if you don't use udev. But you /usr you can.
What I'm trying to say is that read-only is not the only option that
can differ between / and /usr.
>> - dmcrypt: not crypting /usr is just an optimization. E.g. on my laptop
>> I decided to crypt only /home, and use symlinks for the few files in
>> /etc which contain sensitive information, YMMV.
>
> Iâ??m the only one who quoted it, and I already find this is a minor use
> case.
Count me there too. Crypting /usr on a laptop just wastes performance
and cpu which spells into real battery life. Although ecryptfs is
probably a even better alternative.
MfG
Goswin
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