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Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

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Re: Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

#5
post #2

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.

That's an over simplified version of what the next Fedora is going to be doing. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove

The Fedora move is why this link got posted and is getting upvotes.

Re: Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

#6
The title isn't quite correct. He explains /bin vs. /usr/bin, but not /bin vs. /sbin.

My understanding for the latter is that /bin is "normal stuff", while /sbin is system maintenance. But, hey, maybe that split is actually there for obsolete historical reasons, too. Does anyone know?

Re: Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

#7

The title isn't quite correct. He explains /bin vs. /usr/bin, but not /bin vs. /sbin. My understanding for the latter is that /bin is "normal stuff", while /sbin is system maintenance. But, hey, maybe that split is actually there for obsolete historical reasons, too. Does anyone know?

My understanding is that bin is used for programs that do not require super user privileges, where as sbin programs do.

Re: Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

#8
post #7

The title isn't quite correct. He explains /bin vs. /usr/bin, but not /bin vs. /sbin. My understanding for the latter is that /bin is "normal stuff", while /sbin is system maintenance. But, hey, maybe that split is actually there for obsolete historical reasons, too. Does anyone know?

My understanding is that bin is used for programs that do not require super user privileges, where as sbin programs do.

And the reason for splitting them is so that normal users don't have the super-user programs in their $PATH, since they would be useless there. Of course, this is arguably obsolete now since the advent of sudo, policykit, and so on.

Re: Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

#10
much of the original traditional unix file system hierarchy is basically redundant and unnecessary in the modern age. for a good overview (from the author of a linux distribution which departs completely from this tradition), see:

http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=doc/articles/clueles...

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