3 ms·

I also have no memory of /home even existing in roughly the first decade of Unix's existence.

by cbsmith 15y ago

spitfire 15y ago
home directories iirc, lived in /u (/usr these days)
- bodyfour 15y ago
  Depended completely on the site. The first UNIX machine I worked on (ca 1985-1986) still was putting them in /usr for instance. There were certainly sites that used /u for what is now commonly /home (or /export/home on Solaris, /Users on OS/X, ...) This was not something that predated "/usr" though: /usr was already added back in the early 1970s (the linked article was correct about that, although it got many other details wrong) Basically /usr was originally only for home directories (as the name implies) Then it became the place for anything you didn't want to use the precious space on the root filesystem for (hence /usr/bin popped up, and later things like /usr/dict/words) Finally, it became so cluttered that people started locating home directories elsewhere and now the name "/usr" is completely unrelated to its actual purpose.
  - lubutu 15y ago
    Indeed, /usr was already in place in UNIX version 1, according to the 1971 UNIX Programmer's Manual.
  - waitwhat 15y ago
    /usr was originally only for home directories [...] /usr/bin popped up I wonder if this is the origin of the 'bin' user as well, because that's a design decision that never seemed to make any sense.
  - wazoox 15y ago
    Until its last breath, IRIX kept home directories under /usr.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Actually /home was the first automounter map. Brent Callahagn at Sun had built this thing that, in conjunction with NIS (YP) or NIS+, could locate which server your home directory was on, and automatically mount it, decided that the automount point should be '/home' this was distinct from /usr/xx since /usr/xx was xx's home directory on this machine whereas /home/xx was xx's network home directory that would follow them around.

3 ms·

I also have no memory of /home even existing in roughly the first decade of Unix's existence.

by cbsmith 15y ago

I also have no memory of /home even existing in roughly the first decade of Unix's existence.

spitfire 15y ago
home directories iirc, lived in /u (/usr these days)
- bodyfour 15y ago
  Depended completely on the site. The first UNIX machine I worked on (ca 1985-1986) still was putting them in /usr for instance. There were certainly sites that used /u for what is now commonly /home (or /export/home on Solaris, /Users on OS/X, ...) This was not something that predated "/usr" though: /usr was already added back in the early 1970s (the linked article was correct about that, although it got many other details wrong) Basically /usr was originally only for home directories (as the name implies) Then it became the place for anything you didn't want to use the precious space on the root filesystem for (hence /usr/bin popped up, and later things like /usr/dict/words) Finally, it became so cluttered that people started locating home directories elsewhere and now the name "/usr" is completely unrelated to its actual purpose.
  - lubutu 15y ago
    Indeed, /usr was already in place in UNIX version 1, according to the 1971 UNIX Programmer's Manual.
  - waitwhat 15y ago
    /usr was originally only for home directories [...] /usr/bin popped up I wonder if this is the origin of the 'bin' user as well, because that's a design decision that never seemed to make any sense.
  - wazoox 15y ago
    Until its last breath, IRIX kept home directories under /usr.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Actually /home was the first automounter map. Brent Callahagn at Sun had built this thing that, in conjunction with NIS (YP) or NIS+, could locate which server your home directory was on, and automatically mount it, decided that the automount point should be '/home' this was distinct from /usr/xx since /usr/xx was xx's home directory on this machine whereas /home/xx was xx's network home directory that would follow them around.