On 02.10.2013 16:28, Alan McKinnon wrote:
[ ... ]
You should still move portage to var though. Consider it a local fix to
a long-standing bug.
Incidentally, do you know why the tree is in /usr? Because FreeBSD ports
puts it there. Why did they do that? Because FreeBSD is not Linux; it is
derived from SysV, which puts home directories and all manner of other
things in /usr.
I apologize but I always thought that it's Linux that derives from AT&T
SysV (1983), while FreeBSD derives from ... BSD (1978). How come then
Linux uses SysV init and BSD does not? ;)
As to ports placement in FreeBSD, I have never seen any reason to do it
the other way, IMHO /var should not be polluted with huge amounts of
data which is not runtime-related and may occupy tens of gigs (in case
of OOo or LO compilation), rather what I always do (in FreeBSD and in
Gentoo) is just put all ports/portage on a separate partition with
performance-optimized settings (striping, noatime etc). And I'd really
seriously object to putting portage under /var if my opinion were to be
considered...
I also don't like the approach of putting into /var stuff like databases
and other important data. /var is system-related runtime stuff, and data
should always be separate. This also helps keep /var small and neat and
apply to it a different backup policy than to data and portage.
It's as simple as that.
--
Best wishes,
Yuri K. Shatroff