Mats Wichmann <[email protected]> writes:
> There's been ample discussion here about symlinks.
> There was a desire at one time to make sure "the root filesystem" was
> something you could boot to, even in the cases of a mounted /usr. That
> doesn't seem to be a terribly interesting target any longer (separate,
> perhaps even network-mounted /usr). The bigger need ("spirit" if you
> will) is that things can be found in consistent places - and symlinks
> are fine in accomplishing that goal. Other changes in various Linux
> distros have increased the need to have direct-execute binaries and
> directly-linked libraries NOT split up between too many directories, so
> you'll find cases like this:
> $ ls -ld /bin /sbin /lib
> lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jun 19 00:01 /bin -> usr/bin
> lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jun 19 00:01 /lib -> usr/lib
> lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 8 Jun 19 00:01 /sbin -> usr/sbin
> (recent Fedora)
> People seem to feel this is okay based on discussion here, and even if
> someone were to interpret existing FHS wording to suggest it isn't okay,
> it has happened anyway, so perhaps there should be a nod to this in the
> next edition of FHS - development of which has kind of stalled, but is
> still available to be pushed through.
The only purpose I can see of having /bin separate from /usr/bin and /lib
separate from /usr/lib is to allow the two to be on separate file systems
(for whatever reason, whether that be early boot bootstrapping or remote
mounting of /usr or what have you). I think it's quite reasonable to
abandon that goal and just symlink as Fedora has done and say that the
whole root file system, including /usr, is one "unit." Alternately, one
can continue to try to support that, in which case symlinks from /bin to
/usr/bin probably indicate a bug.
I don't think it makes sense to mix the two things: if one is not giving
up on supporting this, symlinks from /bin to /usr/bin would undermine
one's remaining support. So that feels like it would only make sense as a
transitional move towards just abandoning a separate /bin entirely.
--
Russ Allbery ([email protected]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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