5 ms·

There's an interesting piece of advice at the bottom of this post - the author symlinks /bin, /sbin, and /lib to /usr/whatever. Anybody else have an opinion on

by saulrh 15y ago

There's an interesting piece of advice at the bottom of this post - the author symlinks /bin, /sbin, and /lib to /usr/whatever. Anybody else have an opinion on that practice? It's kind of unnecessary, but it also doesn't break anything.

bryanlarsen 15y ago
That's an over simplified version of what the next Fedora is going to be doing. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove The Fedora move is why this link got posted and is getting upvotes.
- waitwhat 15y ago
  While they're at it, they should move /usr/src somewhere else (/var/src?)
jrockway 15y ago
There are a variety of tools that live in /bin but are symlinked in /usr/bin, at least on my 10.04 LTS box: $ for f in /bin/*; do [ -e "/usr$f" ] && echo /usr$f; done; /usr/bin/dumpkeys /usr/bin/ksh /usr/bin/less /usr/bin/lessecho /usr/bin/lessfile /usr/bin/lesskey /usr/bin/lesspipe /usr/bin/loadkeys /usr/bin/mail /usr/bin/nano /usr/bin/tcsh /usr/bin/touch /usr/bin/which /usr/bin/zsh This has the potential to blow something up during the installation procedure if it is not carefully crafted to realize that these files are the same and to ignore link's failure.
calloc 15y ago
It would break FreeBSD's single user mode when using the defaults during installation for partitioning. FreeBSD's default install creates: /, /usr, /tmp, /var and swap space. When you boot in single-user mode all you get is / and nothing else. If everything was in /usr you wouldn't be able to mount /usr ... :P
- waitwhat 15y ago
  Presumably if FreeBSD went down the same path as Fedora, they could also change the default partition layout.
  - IgorPartola 15y ago
    Wouldn't that interfere with the core BSD system vs p ackage binaries/libs paradigm?
    - X-Istence 15y ago
      Packages/binaries/ports tree installs into /usr/local/. See man hier [1]. For example, on a FreeBSD install, it is perfectly safe to rm -rf /usr/local/. Your system will still boot without issues. [1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hier&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hier&apropos=0&...
      - lmm 15y ago
        Which I find is actually quite problematic; "make install" by default puts things into /usr/local, and I would prefer to distinguish between things I've installed and things ports have installed. (Specifically, I need to build my own mplayer, but I also need the ports version installed as some other ports depend on it).
        X-Istence 15y ago
        Feel free to change the prefix passed to the packages you install by hand. /usr/local is the default used by almost all packages I am familiar with, if for example you want /opt you have to modify that yourself.

by saulrh 15y ago

bryanlarsen 15y ago

That's an over simplified version of what the next Fedora is going to be doing. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove The Fedora move is why this link got posted and is getting upvotes.

waitwhat 15y ago
While they're at it, they should move /usr/src somewhere else (/var/src?)

jrockway 15y ago

There are a variety of tools that live in /bin but are symlinked in /usr/bin, at least on my 10.04 LTS box: $ for f in /bin/*; do [ -e "/usr$f" ] && echo /usr$f; done; /usr/bin/dumpkeys /usr/bin/ksh /usr/bin/less /usr/bin/lessecho /usr/bin/lessfile /usr/bin/lesskey /usr/bin/lesspipe /usr/bin/loadkeys /usr/bin/mail /usr/bin/nano /usr/bin/tcsh /usr/bin/touch /usr/bin/which /usr/bin/zsh This has the potential to blow something up during the installation procedure if it is not carefully crafted to realize that these files are the same and to ignore link's failure.

calloc 15y ago

It would break FreeBSD's single user mode when using the defaults during installation for partitioning. FreeBSD's default install creates: /, /usr, /tmp, /var and swap space. When you boot in single-user mode all you get is / and nothing else. If everything was in /usr you wouldn't be able to mount /usr ... :P

waitwhat 15y ago
Presumably if FreeBSD went down the same path as Fedora, they could also change the default partition layout.
- IgorPartola 15y ago
  Wouldn't that interfere with the core BSD system vs p ackage binaries/libs paradigm?
  - X-Istence 15y ago
    Packages/binaries/ports tree installs into /usr/local/. See man hier [1]. For example, on a FreeBSD install, it is perfectly safe to rm -rf /usr/local/. Your system will still boot without issues. [1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hier&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hier&apropos=0&...
    - lmm 15y ago
      Which I find is actually quite problematic; "make install" by default puts things into /usr/local, and I would prefer to distinguish between things I've installed and things ports have installed. (Specifically, I need to build my own mplayer, but I also need the ports version installed as some other ports depend on it).
      - X-Istence 15y ago
        Feel free to change the prefix passed to the packages you install by hand. /usr/local is the default used by almost all packages I am familiar with, if for example you want /opt you have to modify that yourself.