On 02/01/2012 09:40 AM, Eric Myers wrote:
On Tue, 31 Jan 2012, Chris Knadle wrote:
Last month at the MHVLUG meeting I was asking a couple of people about
whether
they knew about the current movement by Red Hat/Fedora to consolidate
binary
directories as follows:
/bin -> /usr/bin
/sbin -> /usr/sbin
/lib -> /usr/lib
/lib64 -> /usr/lib64
I don't know if it still holds, but one reason to have /bin and /usr/bin
separate is that you can then boot to to single user with / mounted
and use stuff in /bin but not have to mount or use /usr/bin stuff.
(Which is why I know some vi, to use /bin/vi because emacs is in
/usr/bin :-)
What advantages are they suggesting come from merging /bin into /usr/bin?
As I understood it, the purpose of the separation goes back to earlier
Unix days, where you would keep the directories in the filesystem root
on a local disk (or faster disk), while /usr/XXX would mount from remote
storage. /usr would be reserved for those libraries and executables not
needed for bootup and login, while /bin, /lib, /sbin & such would be the
first set of files needed.
Interesting that they're trying to remove the filesystem root variants,
since I was thinking of how you could use that very functionality with a
SSD and HDD combination. I figured you could put those initial files on
SSD to spped up boot times, while the more frequently changed and larger
files could be kept on slower but cheaper HDD.
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College
Feb 1 - Home Networking Made Simple with Amahi Home Server
Mar 7 - Desktop Shootout - 9th Anniversary of MHVLUG
Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef
