4 ms·

Now that we understand this can we please put all system tools into /bin? Disk space for binaries has not been a problem for decades now.

pilif 4y ago
having the system mounted in its own sub directory rather than be spread over multiple directories (there's /usr/bin, /usr/share, /usr/lib, etc) has the advantage that a single read-only mount can mount the whole OS. Having the OS mounted read-only provides some security benefits. The other option would of course be to have / mounted ro and then have rw mounts in /home, /etc, /var and /tmp, but this is more complicated than a a rw / and a ro /usr
- andrewshadura 4y ago
  While that's true, these days initramfs is what performs this job.
hulitu 4y ago
It depends. Fsck is slow on big hard drives. Also separating data from programs is a good idea.
captainmuon 4y ago
Disk space was not really the issue. Back in the day extra partitions would actually mean you waste space. It's more efficient to put them on one partition. The issue is organisation. There is already so much junk in the bin folders. I think it would be much neater to further split the bins into various categories: "shell tools" like ls, [, echo; "applications" like firefox, inkscape, "helpers" like gnome-settings-daemon, ... There is no need to show weird daemons when pressing TAB in bash, and there is no need to show `ls` when picking an application via a GUI.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  The problem with that suggestion is that some things belong in more than one category. A much more flexible way of organizing is to use tags. This way a file could have more than one tag. Having a tag hierarchy would be even better, so you can browse down the hierarchy as you'd traverse the tree structure of a typical file system (with the added advantage of allowing a single file to have multiple categories that it could be in).
mrspuratic 4y ago
A long time ago, as a novice sysadmin, I spent some unhappy time fixing a broken Solaris server. The problem was fsck was in /usr/sbin, /usr was a mount point on an external drive array that got its power yanked. Challenge: to boot you need to mount /usr, but first you have to fsck it using the binary in /usr/sbin ... After that I would make sure to have some working (static) binaries for rescue on every *nix system, tar at least, and on Solaris an extra /usr/sbin/fsck under the /usr mount point). You can fix a lot of things with tar, sed and netcat.
- mjevans 4y ago
  These days a static-linked copy of busybox on the root partition is usually enough; assuming you have the space for that. A 'full' initramfs can also help in case you need to bring over a USB drive of tools from another system or have changed hardware.

pilif 4y ago

having the system mounted in its own sub directory rather than be spread over multiple directories (there's /usr/bin, /usr/share, /usr/lib, etc) has the advantage that a single read-only mount can mount the whole OS. Having the OS mounted read-only provides some security benefits. The other option would of course be to have / mounted ro and then have rw mounts in /home, /etc, /var and /tmp, but this is more complicated than a a rw / and a ro /usr

andrewshadura 4y ago
While that's true, these days initramfs is what performs this job.

hulitu 4y ago

It depends. Fsck is slow on big hard drives. Also separating data from programs is a good idea.

captainmuon 4y ago

Disk space was not really the issue. Back in the day extra partitions would actually mean you waste space. It's more efficient to put them on one partition. The issue is organisation. There is already so much junk in the bin folders. I think it would be much neater to further split the bins into various categories: "shell tools" like ls, [, echo; "applications" like firefox, inkscape, "helpers" like gnome-settings-daemon, ... There is no need to show weird daemons when pressing TAB in bash, and there is no need to show `ls` when picking an application via a GUI.

pmoriarty 4y ago
The problem with that suggestion is that some things belong in more than one category. A much more flexible way of organizing is to use tags. This way a file could have more than one tag. Having a tag hierarchy would be even better, so you can browse down the hierarchy as you'd traverse the tree structure of a typical file system (with the added advantage of allowing a single file to have multiple categories that it could be in).

mrspuratic 4y ago

A long time ago, as a novice sysadmin, I spent some unhappy time fixing a broken Solaris server. The problem was fsck was in /usr/sbin, /usr was a mount point on an external drive array that got its power yanked. Challenge: to boot you need to mount /usr, but first you have to fsck it using the binary in /usr/sbin ... After that I would make sure to have some working (static) binaries for rescue on every *nix system, tar at least, and on Solaris an extra /usr/sbin/fsck under the /usr mount point). You can fix a lot of things with tar, sed and netcat.

mjevans 4y ago
These days a static-linked copy of busybox on the root partition is usually enough; assuming you have the space for that. A 'full' initramfs can also help in case you need to bring over a USB drive of tools from another system or have changed hardware.