Re: Package questions
On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 03:14:25PM -0800, Gregory Ade wrote:
> > The correct question is: Why have /usr? And then realizing that on the
> > Hurd those reasons are or will become non-issues.
>
> I suppose it's just been ingrained after years of using "normal" unix
> systems: /bin, /sbin, /lib and such are there to contain only the bare
> necessities to get the system running, or boot up when only the root
> filesystem has survived a thrashing. everything else can go under /usr.
> "optional" software packages go in /opt, and packages local to a specific
> machine go in /usr/local (should /usr happen to be a networked
> filesystem.) It's a nice system; it makes sense (though whether to
> install something in /usr/local or /opt can be confusing).
The Hurd will have shadowfs, a translator that can layer partitions, so all
files appear in the same "mount point". Then you can have bare essentials on
one disk, the rest on another, and they still end up in the same directory.
This combines the good aspects of the old way with the good ones of the new
way.
> I have noticed, though, that HP-UX 11 has /bin, /sbin and /lib as symlinks
> to /usr/bin, /usr/sbin and /usr/lib, which worries me, because it also
> likes to install the OS with seperate / and /usr filesystems. But it is
> an effort, I suppose, to do the same thing as symlinking /usr to . (root),
> just backwards...
yeah :)
> > Or change the permissions of /etc/passwd to restrict it to logged in
> > users. There is no official way to do this right now, as chmod doesn't
> > have symbolic tags for these bits, but you can look at bits/stat.h and
> > use octal
>
> Ahh.. As anyone out there played with this? If not, I might well attempt
> the modification of chmod as a first crack at helping out with the
> development effort. (Got to start somewhere, right? =)
Yes :) However, ask on bug-hurd for how the input and output should look
like. Nobody has decided about symbolic names etc. A reference
implementation that only needs to be tweaked would be fine, though. Then it
isn't so theoretical.
Thanks,
Marcus
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