Systemd and Fedora 14

Posted Sep 2, 2010 9:35 UTC (Thu) by Randakar (guest, #27808)
In reply to: Systemd and Fedora 14 by Los__D
Parent article: Systemd and Fedora 14

Actually putting the symlink in /sbin IS worse than putting it in /bin.

/sbin is intended to be the place where crucial system utilities live that always should be available, AFAIK. When this distinction was made in the (distant) past the idea was that /bin could live on a different filesystem from root. /sbin would contain everything one might need before /bin could get mounted.

Putting systemd in /bin breaks that idea rather thoroughly. Why have the distinction between the two places at all if the init system doesn't live in /sbin?

Systemd and Fedora 14

Posted Sep 2, 2010 12:05 UTC (Thu) by robbe (guest, #16131) [Link]

I assume you are confounding that with the /$d vs. /usr/$d (for values of d in {lib, bin, sbin, ...}) distinction. A system is expected to be able to boot into a more-or-less usable mode without /usr.

Except for embedded systems I don't have access to any machine that would be able to boot without /bin. For example, all shells are located there.

Systemd and Fedora 14

Posted Sep 2, 2010 18:42 UTC (Thu) by ABCD (subscriber, #53650) [Link]

If /bin is on a separate filesystem from /, then you wouldn't even be able to mount /bin because you wouldn't have a /bin/mount program that could mount it.

From a footnote in the latest FHS: Deciding what things go into "sbin" directories is simple: if a normal (not a system administrator) user will ever run it directly, then it must be placed in one of the "bin" directories. Ordinary users should not have to place any of the sbin directories in their path.