On Wed, Jul 08, 2020 at 09:01:14PM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote: > On 2020-07-07 12:20, Steve Litt wrote: > > > You need certain executables, pre-mount, before a separate /usr can be > > mounted. These went in /sbin, which is on the root and always > > available. If you could mount the root partition, you could proceed. > > > > But now, if you mount /usr somewhere off the root, and simply have > > /sbin symlink to it, those executables aren't available right away. > > Imagine if you need the mount executable to mount /usr, but the mount > > executable *is* on /usr. Buried shovel. The only way around it is to > > do the mounts in initramfs. > > Of course I know all of this. And I guess strictly speaking it *is* an > answer to my question: if you had this setup and suddenly, without > notice, you got switched to a "merged" world, you'd be hosed until you > built an initramfs. > > But that is not how in fact it happens: you have plenty of notice, and > plenty of time to change to a scheme with /usr within the root > filesystem. And then you don't need an initramfs again, at least not for > the above reason. > > So maybe the real question is, in the merged world, do you have a reason > to insist on /usr being a mount point, other than tradition? I know that > people used to do rescue tasks via a single-user boot with only the > rootfs mounted, but for a long time now it is far easier to do such > things by booting into some kind of "live" system on a USB stick. One > can make the live system minimal if so inclined, and in fact the minimal > Devuan live system is just about perfect for this purpose.
I had to demerge my /usr partition when the contents of my root partition became too large for space available on its partition and neighbouring partitions made it difficult to enlarge it. I expect other admins have other reasons. -- hendrik > > -- > Ian > _______________________________________________ > Dng mailing list > Dng@lists.dyne.org > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
