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Re: /usr mapped to /



On Fri, Jan 15, 1999 at 03:22:41PM -0500, John Tobey wrote:
> Marcus writes:
> > However, this is only half of the full story. Some packages _create_
> > additional files or symlinks in their installation scripts. For example,
> > /bin/vi is a script in the "ae" package, but every vi package (nvi, vim)
> > creates a symlink /usr/bin/vi via update-alternatives (which, btw, fails
> > because /bin/vi exists already). This leads to subtle
> > problems, for example, calling "vi" results in a loop which does not
> > terminate, because /bin/vi is calling /usr/bin/vi...
> > 
> > This problem can't be solved by shadowfs, obviously.
> 
> I must be missing something.  My understanding of how shadowfs will
> work is that the vi from /usr/bin may be shadowed by vi in /bin, but
> still visible in /usr/bin.  Thus /bin/vi and /usr/bin/vi would appear
> as different.  If shadowfs is not expected to work this way, why not
> make a special linux-compat-fs that does?  (eventually)

Now that you mention it, I am not sure any longer how it is supposed to
work...
 
> > The only solution is to
> > seperate /usr completely from /, or to find all such conflicts and solve
> > them in one way or another.
> > 
> > I have no idea how much of these problems exist. It can be just one, or some
> > dozens. Debian has over 2000 packages, auditing them all seems to ne
> > unpractical :)
> 
> Assuming you have all the packages installed (haha) you can find them
                                               ^^^^^^ 

:)

> easily from the command line:
> 
>     feynman:/# find `ls / |egrep -v '^(usr|proc|src)$'` | perl -lne 'print if -f && -e "/usr/$_"'
>     bin/vi
>     sbin/rmt
>     feynman:/# diff /sbin/rmt /usr/sbin/rmt
>     feynman:/# 
> 
> (Of course, I don't have every package installed.  I have no idea why
> rmt is in two places, but at least it's the same in both.)

/sbin/rmt is a link to /usr/sbin/rmt. Such links are compatibility links for
program which expect rmt in /sbin/rmt.

I don't know how dpkg works when it sees such conflicts in the same package.
Can you check if you have the link or the real program in /sbin?

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
"Rhubarb is no Egyptian god."        Debian GNU/Linux        finger brinkmd@ 
Marcus Brinkmann                   http://www.debian.org    master.debian.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de                        for public  PGP Key
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/       PGP Key ID 36E7CD09


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