4 ms·

I still think it’s funny how what used to be the location of user home directories, namely /usr, has been retconned to be where the majority of binaries are sto

by irdc 3y ago

I still think it’s funny how what used to be the location of user home directories, namely /usr, has been retconned to be where the majority of binaries are stored.

sverhagen 3y ago
I didn't know this. I had never seen it. I've used Linux for many years, but not an expert by any means. But it peeked my curiosity, and I found the explanation in this answer satisfying: https://askubuntu.com/a/135679 https://askubuntu.com/a/135679
rollcat 3y ago
The story went something like, the guys building UNIX got a second hard drive, so they moved the home directories (/usr) to it. As the system grew, they started dropping more binaries into /usr/bin (while trying to keep /bin for things needed to boot/rescue the system, in case the disk with /usr failed). The rest is history.
- yrro 3y ago
  And to this day there is a mysterious 'bin' user on Linux systems that no one seems to use or know the purpose of. I wonder if another UNIX at some point added such a user in order to reserve '/usr/bin'...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    At least one old UNIX book of French origin described the “bin” user as the owner of the common binary files on the system.
    - jmclnx 3y ago
      Yes, that was what I remember. I think having bin own the binaries was a kind of security check for suids. Avoids having a suid on a root owned binary. Plus you could use bin to install programs instead of root. Restricting who has root access. But I suppose it did not work out as people were hoping and only added to admin costs. Still, I was a bit annoyed when I noticed everything was owned by root as opposed to bin when I first installed Slackware decades ago. But I got over it :)
  - egberts1 3y ago
    used to be that a drum drive covered /bin and a platter drive provided /usr/bin. Makes upgrades easier when leaving SysV init alone (in /bin).
- sillywalk 3y ago
  Here is more detail: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...
  - rollcat 3y ago
    Oh my gosh, that /opt/local rant was prophetic. This is how I set my $PATH, note this code is portable between several Linux distros (including NixOS), macOS, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and amd64/arm64... <https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/52a634f/.profile#L14 https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/52a634f/.profile#L1...> Whenever I touch it, I just wish I could put PATH=/bin in there instead, but then I'd be stuck juggling 17 different ways to make bind mounts.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by irdc 3y ago

I still think it’s funny how what used to be the location of user home directories, namely /usr, has been retconned to be where the majority of binaries are stored.

sverhagen 3y ago

I didn't know this. I had never seen it. I've used Linux for many years, but not an expert by any means. But it peeked my curiosity, and I found the explanation in this answer satisfying: https://askubuntu.com/a/135679 https://askubuntu.com/a/135679

rollcat 3y ago

The story went something like, the guys building UNIX got a second hard drive, so they moved the home directories (/usr) to it. As the system grew, they started dropping more binaries into /usr/bin (while trying to keep /bin for things needed to boot/rescue the system, in case the disk with /usr failed). The rest is history.

yrro 3y ago
And to this day there is a mysterious 'bin' user on Linux systems that no one seems to use or know the purpose of. I wonder if another UNIX at some point added such a user in order to reserve '/usr/bin'...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  At least one old UNIX book of French origin described the “bin” user as the owner of the common binary files on the system.
  - jmclnx 3y ago
    Yes, that was what I remember. I think having bin own the binaries was a kind of security check for suids. Avoids having a suid on a root owned binary. Plus you could use bin to install programs instead of root. Restricting who has root access. But I suppose it did not work out as people were hoping and only added to admin costs. Still, I was a bit annoyed when I noticed everything was owned by root as opposed to bin when I first installed Slackware decades ago. But I got over it :)
- egberts1 3y ago
  used to be that a drum drive covered /bin and a platter drive provided /usr/bin. Makes upgrades easier when leaving SysV init alone (in /bin).
sillywalk 3y ago
Here is more detail: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...
- rollcat 3y ago
  Oh my gosh, that /opt/local rant was prophetic. This is how I set my $PATH, note this code is portable between several Linux distros (including NixOS), macOS, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and amd64/arm64... <https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/52a634f/.profile#L14 https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/52a634f/.profile#L1...> Whenever I touch it, I just wish I could put PATH=/bin in there instead, but then I'd be stuck juggling 17 different ways to make bind mounts.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]