The strangeness called `sbin'

[Warner Losh]

On Nov 14, 2011, at 2:29 AM, Ed Schouten wrote:

> Hi Doug,
> 
> * Doug Barton <dougb at FreeBSD.org>, 20111113 23:57:
>> If we're going to talk about making a change that's actually worth
>> making, let's just move everything into / and get rid of /usr
>> altogether. It served its purpose back when it came into being, but with
>> modern disk sizes and the (unfortunate) prevalence of the "one big /"
>> layout model, it's time in the sun is long past.
> 
> Now that I think of it, it may be possible to sort of combine this with
> my approach in a way that it doesn't break POLA for existing users. What
> if we leave everything in the tree alone, but only modify the code, so
> that any new installations on empty directory structures use the
> following symlinks:
> 
> - /sbin -> /bin
> - /usr/bin -> /bin
> - /usr/games -> /bin
> - /usr/lib -> /lib
> - /usr/sbin -> /bin
> 
> But now the question remains how we should change the default
> partitioning. I think default installations place home directories in
> /usr/home, with a symlink from /home. Should they now be placed in
> /usr/local/home?

That assumes that you have wide-spread support to change the status-quo.  It isn't clear from this thread that you've made that case.

Doug is right that there be dragons here, and I for one would like to see cold, hard data on the actual effect of hundreds of systems that have a good mix of ports installed rather than logic that it shouldn't matter.

Warner