Tim Bates wrote:
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
The natural question to ask at this point is: what is the intended
difference between /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin?
--
Justin Megawarne
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
