Why /usr/local/etc???

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Sun Aug 24 17:23:07 UTC 2008


You gave a very good explaination with many background
information; there's just something I'd like to add.

On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:18:41 +0100, Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:
> However there is no overriding reason to rearrange the filesystems.
> Oh, there are arguments about "does the root partition still need to be
> kept separate" (personally, I'd say no it doesn't: one big partition to
> hold it all is much simpler to administer, but opinions differ) but
> nothing that makes change imperative.

The two main layout concepts "all in one" and "everything separate"
have their advantages and disadvantages. As you mentioned, having
everything within one partition saves you from calculating disk
space needed vs. disk space available (Oops, /usr is full!). But
separate partitions allow you to backup data partition-wise onto
media that's big enough (usually tape), so you can dump everything
1:1 and restore it 1:1 - just as you left it.



> I'd see filesystems divided into three classes depending on 
> content:  generic -- user home directories, web content, databases, system 
> sources, the ports tree etc. that you'ld want to share or be able to 
> migrate across all instances; arch specific -- kernel, binaries, shlibs, 
> /usr/obj, binary package collections which are tied to the CPU architecture 
> and the OS version and finally instance specific --  configuration data (ie 
> /etc, /usr/local/etc), log files, temporary and swap spaces.  It's not 
> excessively difficult to make this sort of split with existing layouts,
> but it is more complicated than it needs to be.

Maybe you're interested in reading this discussion:

	http://www.osnews.com/comments/20207

It mostly deals with Linux file system layout, but go see PC-BSD
and the concepts they introduced with their PBI packages.



-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


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