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Comment on Filesystem Hierarchy Standard - Reference Poster / Cheatsheet

SciPiTie@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I never understood why the shareable /usr is parent to the non shareable /usr/local. Wouldn’t a /usr/shared be way easier especially in the early network days?

If anyone has a link or some insights into this historical nitbit I’d highly appreciate it!

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Markaos@lemmy.one ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No comment on sensibility, but technically both are equally difficult - mount the parent filesystem, then mount the child filesystem into an empty directory in the parent. Doesn’t matter which one is where, it’s all abstracted away at this level anyway.

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- SciPiTie@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  But when I mount a shared /usr on a remote machine it will always have the mount point /usr/local as empty folder - and either have an empty folder or have a mount target that is dependent on a network resource - that’s why for me it’s so unintuitive.
  
  But then again I started with network stuff way more than a decade after all this got created 🤣
  
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  - Markaos@lemmy.one ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    ~~I think the idea at the time was that if /usr is unavailable, you won’t be doing much with the system anyway (other than fixing the configuration).~~
    
    Nevermind, apparently the original meaning had nothing to do with a network (TIL for me), so our discussion is kinda moot. See section 0.24 in this 2.9BSD (1983) installation guide
    
    Locally written commands that aren’t distributed are kept in /usr/src/local and their binaries are kept in /usr/local. This allows /usr/bin, /usr/ucb, and /bin to correspond to the distribution tape (and to the manuals that people can buy). People wishing to use /usr/local commands are made aware that they aren’t in the base manual.
    
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    SciPiTie@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Ohhh now that is awesome and makes sense! Thanks a lot for that find :)
    
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