On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 10:45:09PM +0200, Per Olofsson wrote: > The argument is about the fact that there are, for example, two bin > directories: /bin and /usr/bin. The same goes for lib and sbin. Why > not store everything in the root directories (/bin, /lib, /share, > etc.) instead?
The reason generally is that /usr can be put on another system entirely and remotely mounted, because as you said it can be read only. That way a whole cluster of machines can use precisely the same /usr directory, which makes systems administration somewhat easier. The top-level /bin and similar directories are for those files that are necessary even if the network-mounted /usr is unavailable. If all your binaries were in /bin and that was mounted from a remote machine, and that remote machine was down, the local machine would be entirely unusable. So having both is a tradeoff between having the essential files locally, whilst having the bulk of them able to be provided remotely. Tim Bates -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
