Thank you. I wish they would just rename the directories already.
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Linux Directory Structure (File System Structure) Explained with Examples
21–26 of 26 posts
Re: Linux Directory Structure (File System Structure) Explained with Examples
#22Heh. The OS landscape has changed over time, as disks have gotten much faster and much larger, and some of the design decisions made decades ago no longer make sense. Fedora is moving everything from /bin, /sbin, /lib, and /lib64 into /usr because maintaining this separation no longer really makes sense: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForT...
It's fair to say that some of the specific design constraints no longer apply.
However, that's not to say that we haven't arrived at similar conclusions (a root filesystem accessible at boot, multiply hierarchies of additional storage under, say, /usr, /usr/local, etc.
I mean, the ultimate conclusion of the UsrMerge argument would be to put all directories on root.
I find the justifications for UsrMerge to be specious at best, and better described as counterfactual. I strongly suspect that a large part of the reasoning is Red Hat's chronic inability to enforce discipline among its software packagers (both within and outside of Red Hat).
Re: Linux Directory Structure (File System Structure) Explained with Examples
#23So /usr/local implies that the binaries were built for the local machine, and might not work elsewhere?
It's "locally managed". Under, say, Debian Policy, a Debian package may create directories under /usr/local, but it may not create files, or delete either files or directories. Which means that the local administrator can add/remove software here.
/opt is another directory that's generally intended for third-party software. So, say, you'll find /opt/oracle/, /opt/dell/, /opt/google/, /opt/ibm/, etc., in which various enterprise tools go. There's no reason for space rationalization you can't move this to /usr/local/opt and symlink back up to the root filesystem, as some prefer and I generally do.
Where things get confusing is when you're on, say, an Mac and install software from the DarwinPorts project, which creates a managed tree ... under /usr/local. This strikes me as somehow wrong (/opt/darwinports/ would be a better choice IMO).
Re: Linux Directory Structure (File System Structure) Explained with Examples
#24Heh. The OS landscape has changed over time, as disks have gotten much faster and much larger, and some of the design decisions made decades ago no longer make sense. Fedora is moving everything from /bin, /sbin, /lib, and /lib64 into /usr because maintaining this separation no longer really makes sense: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForT...
It's fair to say that some of the specific design constraints no longer apply. However, that's not to say that we haven't arrived at similar conclusions (a root filesystem accessible at boot, multiply hierarchies of additional storage under, say, /usr, /usr/local, etc. I mean, the ultimate conclusion of the UsrMerge argument would be to put all directories on root. I find the justifications for UsrMerge to be speciou…
Fedora put everything in /usr so that if you are sharing it, you can NFS mount just one directory instead of several.
Re: Linux Directory Structure (File System Structure) Explained with Examples
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fair to say that some of the specific design constraints no longer apply. However, that's not to say that we haven't arrived at similar conclusions (a root filesystem accessible at boot, multiply hierarchies of additional storage under, say, /usr, /usr/local, etc. I mean, the ultimate conclusion of the UsrMerge argument would be to put all directories on root. I find the justifications for UsrMerge to be speciou…
Fedora put everything in /usr so that if you are sharing it, you can NFS mount just one directory instead of several.
There are multiple ways to do this. UsrMerge still isn't required.
Re: Linux Directory Structure (File System Structure) Explained with Examples
#26I've been using Linux for about 4 years now, and I've tried to find a document like this a few times and failed. This is probably the best reference on this topic I've seen yet.
There's https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Filesystem_Hierarchy_St... too.
Probably Arch-specific, but I bet most stuff applies to Unix in general as well.