Next Step...

Posted Apr 2, 2011 22:58 UTC (Sat) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103)
In reply to: Next Step... by rleigh
Parent article: Introducing /run

Go the other way. Make /bin, /sbin, /lib and /lib64 symlinks to their counterparts in /usr. If you do, then suddenly /usr gets its original meaning back as "Unix System Resources". Because that's what it is going to be then: in /usr you find "The OS". And in / you will then only have a few top-level directories whose meaning is clearly bound to lifecycle properties, nothing else anymore.

Think a bit about this, let it sink in. It's much nicer to symlink the root /bin, /sbin, /lib directories into /usr, then the other way round.

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Next Step...

Posted Apr 3, 2011 21:51 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

This is a bit nicer. I really hate all those extra folders in the root directory.

However, here's the next question. If we get rid of separately-mounted /usr then we should as hell have something to replace it.

The current initramfs-based infrastructure just doesn't cut it (even in Dracut). It's way too complex to manage. What if I want to have a LDAP client in initramfs?

Hm. Why not treat initramfs as a small separate installation?.. It can even be managed using chroot'ed package managers. Hmmm...

Next Step...

Posted May 4, 2011 22:33 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

That seemed cracked at first sight, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. (I think SysV did something like it, too, but I don't have a SysV system nearby to check.)

It requires only one change to early boot: the initramfs needs to find and mount /usr as well as /. Since it's already finding /, this is unlikely to be remotely problematic: it can figure out where to find it by consulting the real /etc/fstab on the / it just mounted, as well.

I think I'll rejig my system this way and see what breaks.