Re: Stuff from /bin, /sbin, /lib depending on /usr/lib libraries

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Steve Langasek]
> My knee-jerk reaction to the Fedora proposal had been that it was
> sick and wrong and would cause unacceptable breakage for users on
> upgrades if Debian adopted the same plan.  However, I struggled to
> formulate a concrete scenario where losing support for that last
> configuration would actually make a difference.

I can give you one example of what we loose if stuff in / depend on
stuff in /usr/.  I read the entire thread, and everyone is talking
about the boot, while ignoring the shutdown.

When using NSS modules linked to libraries in /usr/ and bash (or any
other shell loading user information at startup) as /bin/sh, the shell
scripts being run to shut down the machine will block /usr/ from being
umounted.  When /usr/ is a LVM partition, this block LVM from being
shut down, and leave /usr/ in a dirty state and LVM not properly shut
down before poweroff.

Thus, having stuff in / depend on libraries in /usr/ can cause real
problems during shutdown.

See <URL: http://bugs.debian.org/120340 > and
<URL: http://bugs.debian.org/159771 > for the old story about bash and
LDAP NSS blocking umount.

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen