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Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

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Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#301

Post by ntauthority »

Cockbrand wrote: post #189
ink_13 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful, you'll attract computing historians who will want to tell you that "usr" actually stands for "UNIX system resources"

That's how I've learned it around 1995, and that the division between /[s]bin and /usr/[s]bin has the reason that the former are required for system boot, while the latter are mounted via NFS from a central server - why waste local disk space when these would be identical for every system anyway (in a homogenous environment, at least). While that made a lot of sense to me back then, I've become aware that it might no…

NFS is a Sun thing. If you consider Sun as the canonical historical Unix, this is still correct.

Sun had a few interesting early views on networking.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#302

Post by musicale »

cptnapalm wrote: post #287
musicale wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice backronym, but /usr/ken (etc.) in v6 shows that /usr was originally a user disk. You could ask Ken Thompson (/usr/ken) himself to verify. ;-)

Given that he is THE Ken Thompson, I'd argue that he was, in fact, the UNIX system resource.

Bahahaha. Same probably goes for everyone else in /usr/ like /usr/dmr.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#304

Post by musicale »

einpoklum wrote: post #281
musicale wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not get rid of /usr? To avoid breaking backward compatibility.

You could have links from /usr instead of from / , couldn't you?

I think the path of least resistance is symlinking /usr/bin/ to /bin, but now that I think about it I think I misunderstood GP's suggestion.

GP's idea, as I am now thinking about it it, is that you could basically move everything out of /usr into /, effectively getting rid of /usr.

Symlinking /usr to / seems like a dubious idea (since we'd get weird things like /usr/etc/passwd) but turning all of its top-level directories into symlinks seems like a possibly OK idea.

Looking at my ubuntu installation, /{bin,sbin, lib,lib32,libx32,lib64) are all links to /usr/{...}, which seems backwards to me. I think they should have hoisted everything into / and made /usr/* symlinks for backward compatibility.

macOS still has a traditional BSD style /bin (37 utilities) and /usr/bin (1000+).

(But why is /bin/sleep a 150K executable? maybe it's a fat binary in more ways than one?)

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#305

Post by Decabytes »

CameronNemo wrote: post #273
Decabytes wrote: post #179

I wish most *Unixes would go the Gobo Linux route with a Program, Users, System, Data, Mount file hierarchy that is just symlinks under the hood to the old hierarchy

Why rename? How does that benefit us? The only real difference gobo offers is separating program and system files, but I'm not even sure what the difference is there. Other than that: * /Users == /home * /Data == /var * /Mount == /mnt (?) so what do we get by breaking the world?

> so what do we get by breaking the world?

In the the gobo documentation^1 section called "But what about Unix compatibility?"

> The GoboLinux system layout seems to be a major departure from the Unix tradition. Does this mean all programs need to adjusted so that they work with the new layout? Fortunately, the answer is no. Through a mapping of traditional paths into their GoboLinux counterparts, we transparently retain compatibility with the Unix legacy.

~] ls -l /dev/null | cut -b 45- /dev/null

~] ls -l /bin/sh | cut -b 45- sh -> /Programs/Bash/4.4/bin/bash

~] ls -l /usr/include/stdio.h | cut -b 45- stdio.h -> /Programs/Glibc/2.24/include/stdio.h

> There is no rocket science to this: /bin is a link to /System/Index/bin. And as a matter of fact, so is /usr/bin. And /usr/sbin... all "binaries" directories map to the same place. Amusingly, this makes us even more compatible than some more standard-looking distributions. In GoboLinux, all standard paths work for all files, while other distros may struggle with incompatibilites such as scripts breaking when they refer to /usr/bin/foo when the file is actually in /usr/local/bin/foo.

> You may have noticed that the Unix paths did not show up in the system root listing in the very first example. They are actually there, but they are concealed from view using the GoboHide kernel extension. This is for aesthetic purposes only and purely optional, though: GoboLinux does not require modifications in the kernel or any other system components. But our users seem to like it a lot. :-)

So it doesn't break the world. The faq^2 also indicates this wasn't a change to make Linux more newbie friendly, but in my own words I think it does.

1. https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html

2. https://gobolinux.org/faq.html

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#307

Post by dotancohen »

mwcampbell wrote: post #121
dotancohen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Roddenberry used his fictional future to show us what our future could be. That was the point that I was trying to make without being too explicit - that could in fact be our future. If we choose it.

Maybe I'm succumbing to the cynical zeitgeist, but I figure the future will be primarily whatever the wealthy minority wants. If that's so, then maybe the best hope for people like me is a future like the one portrayed in the opening of Ready Player Two (generally not a very good book), where a VR-obsessed multi-billionaire funds work on neural interfaces, starting with implants for disabled people and culminating in…

  > I figure the future will be primarily whatever the wealthy minority wants.
Unfortunately, you're probably right. Roddenberry didn't ignore this possibility, the Terran Empire was a warning of what the alternative could be.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#308

Post by mwcampbell »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #205
mwcampbell wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can only be exposed to so much backlash from seemingly reasonable people before wondering if they're actually right.

"Seemingly reasonable" is a poor place to start. It's somehow similar to the way so many of us expect actually evil people to somehow come with horns or other evil-indicating visual accessories. The reality is that evil people wear suits, and jeans, and shorts and hats and look just like the non-evil people. So it is with "reasonable". The fact that someone can phrase their objections to accessibility that doesn't ma…

> (it doesn't mean that they are either

Then we should start with the assumption that they're not, right? I'm guessing that starting out by assuming the worst in others is one thing that contributes to the current polarization in US politics.

> Please, protect yourself from the backlash from these "seemingly reasonable" people.

What specifically do you advise that I do here? I don't want to just ignore challenges to the idea that accessibility should be a requirement. If I pay attention to these people and put in the effort to understand why they think as they do, then I can become a more effective advocate, or possibly even revise my position. Yes, the latter may lead me to question whether I should even exist, but it seems to me that a healthy mind should be able to dispassionately contemplate hypotheticals that even threaten oneself.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#309

Post by isr »

makeitdouble wrote: post #101
isr wrote: post #19

Sigh ... gobolinux solved this quite elegantly over 20 years ago, and to this day most folks don't quite grok how simple and elegant their solution was.

From the Gobolinux homepage > /bin is a link to /System/Index/bin. And as a matter of fact, so is /usr/bin. And /usr/sbin So, they're doing exactly the same thing as Debian is doing on the default merged configuration ? Issues seen on Debian are not the system using symlinks or not, but packages failing when exchanged between system that still had both /bin/ and /usr/bin as separate directories, as it was historicall…

> So, they're doing exactly the same thing as Debian is doing on the default merged configuration ?

No.

* https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/clueless.html

* https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html

I'll just copy & paste from earlier posts I made on a gobolinux-related thread some time ago (can't be bothered to rewrite the same arguments in different words)

"Anyone who wants to try out gobolinux for real would at least do some basic reading first. Its that distinct a distro that you kind of have to, and no problems with that. Not everything innovative can be expected to be digested without a modicum of work up front.

...

Sometimes the simplest alternative implementations require the most up-front understanding, because their simplicity challenges long-held preconceptions about how things should be.

Thats Gobo in a nutshell.

At its heart, its actually a very simple distro. Which uses simple tools, and the filesystem, to lay everything bare in front of the user.

Funnily enough, Gobo is one of the few distros where you can refer to /bin/, and as long as actually have that pkg installed (yes, under /Programs), then /bin/xyz WILL be found. Guaranteed.

Thats by design."

And:

"The kernel module that hides the standard dirs under / is entirely optional, and is only there for aesthetic purposes. If you don't want it, don't load it. Absolutely nothing in gobolinux requires that kernel module to be running. Again, its just purely for aesthetic purposes."

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#310

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

mwcampbell wrote: post #308
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Seemingly reasonable" is a poor place to start. It's somehow similar to the way so many of us expect actually evil people to somehow come with horns or other evil-indicating visual accessories. The reality is that evil people wear suits, and jeans, and shorts and hats and look just like the non-evil people. So it is with "reasonable". The fact that someone can phrase their objections to accessibility that doesn't ma…

> (it doesn't mean that they are either Then we should start with the assumption that they're not, right? I'm guessing that starting out by assuming the worst in others is one thing that contributes to the current polarization in US politics. > Please, protect yourself from the backlash from these "seemingly reasonable" people. What specifically do you advise that I do here? I don't want to just ignore challenges to…

I think that empathy is something we should all try to cultivate more of, and I try to do this myself (much to the derisive contempt of some people who do indeed think you should just assume the worst based on the smallest possible evidence).

However, while we definitely need more empathy, the world is also full of stupidity, and there's a point in everything where you need to be able to stop putting your energy into fighting the stupid. There's a point where you have to say "no, wait, these people are not actually arguing in good faith, i've explained to them over and over again why they are wrong, why the evidence of the last N years shows them to be wrong, and they have no answer to this, and just keep repeating the same falsehoods. I'm done".

Now, if you're not at that point with the people you engage with about this, great, keep aiming for empathy and understanding. But if you are, move on.

There's a company I collaborated with once who had an epiphany when they realized they had been putting way too much energy into trying to prevent people ripping off their software. They changed direction and focused on ignoring the people who did that, and instead tried to provide the best possible customer service and support they could to people who had paid them. Things got better for everyone. I think there's a general lesson here about where best to direct one's energies.

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