On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 05:11:01 -0500 Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 22:11:17 +1300 > Daniel Reurich <dan...@centurion.net.nz> wrote: > > > Hi Devuan followers, fans and friends, > > > > Debian as of the upcoming Buster release looks to be implementing a > > merged /usr by default. At this stage there is no plan to make it > > forced... but you never know what happens when their Technical > > Committee suddenly decides it's an issue they need to force a > > decision on... > > > > So... for Devuan, do we want to default to a merged /usr in our > > coming release of Beowulf or are we going to resist another > > pointless rearranging of the deck chairs... > > > > Keen to get some feedback on this > > Back in the what, 1970's, the Unix guys > split /usr/sbin, /sbin, /usr/bin, and /bin to accommodate early boot, > by separating out statically compiled stuff used in the earliest boot. > But then initramfs made these separate directories unnecessary, so why > in the world would we continue the split? > > Well, maybe because initramfs is a PITA many people choose to avoid. > When things go wrong, it's the ultimate black box. And I'm very scared > that one day Poettering/Redhat/Freedesktop.org will corner the market > on initramfs makers, will make them systemd only, sans-systemd distros > who have completed the merge will have the choice of backing out the > merge or going to systemd. > > Initramfs (or initrd before it) is the ultimate black box. You can't > get your normal voltmeter probes in there: You need to use special > stuff that's hard to use. You can init the hard disk with /bin/bash, > but not the initramfs. Oh, and not even the /bin/bash if the merge > happens. > > Here's some info on dracut, the most prevalent initramfs maker: > > https://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/what-on-earth-is-dracut-1078647 > > Oooh, notice they say dracut is "based on udev events". If you're > avoiding systemd, and Redhat has taken over udev, what could > *possibly* go wrong? > > Here's some recommended reading on "the merge": > > https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/InitrdInterface/ > > https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken/ > > The gist of the preceding links is "hey, other programs conflate early > with late boot programs, so don't blame us for doing it too. Oh, and > by the way, most of those conflaters, like udev, are under our > control. Conflation is another form of entanglement, but don't blame > us." > > For those using ext4, assuming a kernel with ext4 compiled in, without > need for root disk lvm, encryption, and raid, the init system can > immediately use the static executables in /sbin to mount necessary > disks and then go about the rest of the boot. > > Systemd loves to brag about their boot time, but on a system with ext4 > drivers compiled into the kernel, a separate /sbin guaranteed on the > root partition, and minimal use of udev in the boot (you *could* run > it as a daemon, in parallel, using runit), boots would be quick > indeed. Switch-root, killall5, and all the other stuff done before > disks begin to mount, goes away. > > I vote against "the merge". > > SteveT > So, after reading Steve's enlightening description, I am with him, the merge is only needed by systemd and seems to be a way of forcing it on everybody, so I am against it. Rowland _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
