Directory structures in the future and other things I want.

[Nils Philippsen]

On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 17:49 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Martin Sourada wrote:
> > From all the system dirs I use I would not tell only
> > what's in /etc by looking at the name, the rest is named pretty well
> > (though I don't completely understand what binaries go directly to /bin
> > rather than /usr/bin...)
> 
> In a different lifetime, the assumptions were that /bin was small and 
> that /usr wouldn't be mounted until fairly late in the start-up process, 
> so /bin had to contain the minimal set of tools to get through booting 
> and mounting up the other drives (which might be network mounted) and 
> recover from any problems.

Scratch "in a different lifetime". Granted, we don't have the problems
of yore, we do have big, cheap disks and don't have to make do with /usr
mounted over NFS. Still, I like to have a small root volume with all the
essential, can't-live-without-them tools on it, simply because it's a so
much smaller target if disaster strikes -- it's good to have it at hand
to salvage what's salvageable in this case. I'd be very pissed if I
couldn't setup my systems this way just due to somebody's feelings about
prettiness being violated.

> > -10. In /sbin and /usr/sbin aren't binaries supposed to be run by
> > average user and some of them even does not work with insufficient
> > privileges. If you insist on using them you should be proficient enough
> > to be able to add it to your path yourself.
> 
> In the vast majority of cases today, this 'average user' is the same 
> person who did the install and will su to root whenever necessary.  So 
> he's just going to be confused when commands sometimes aren't found.

Tab completion is a real usability kicker for having sbin vs. bin: it
benefits tremendously from having only those commands in your PATH which
are sensible to be used. Everything else just clutters up your display
if you use TAB-TAB to find commands.

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
 Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."  --  B. Franklin, 1759
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