From: drew@cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) Subject: Re: Linux File System Document Revision 1.0 Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1992 21:11:23 GMT
In article <920312534@gandalf.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> u31b3hs@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt) writes:
>From article <4591@mccuts.uts.mcc.ac.uk>, by zlsiial@uts.mcc.ac.uk (A. V. Le Blanc):
>I really don't know. I once thought about a major structure change,
>because I never liked /etc and /usr/etc, or things like /usr/lib/tmac.
>There are a few ways how bigger software packets like news or other
>things could be installed, and the usual way is putting the manual pages
>to /usr/man or /usr/local/man, the user commands to /usr/bin or
>/usr/local/bin and the rest, if any, to a special directory, often
>/usr/whoknows. Putting the user directories in /home is a change I
>really appreciate.
>
>> Before the flames begin to sear, let me say that I think this is
>> a relatively small point, and that the rest of the document provides
>> for a clean, intelligible system which should not be too alien to
>> any experienced Unix user, and yet which should be easily grasped
>> by Unix novices.
>Yes, it is the familar structure.
>
You said it. It is a familiar structure. It is the structure which
most standard distributions are set up to live within - you get
a program off of the net, make config, then make install,
by default man pages end up in /usr/man, and depending on
the program binaries / libraries in /usr/bin /usr/lib or /usr/local/*.
As Linux becomes more standard, Joe User is going to go, see something
on his "real" Unix machines, say "Gee, this is cool," go out on the
net, get the source, and build under Linux. If everything, including
the install, works as is out of the box, this is simpler.
Do you work under both Berkeley, SYSV, AIX? Berkely has /etc/rc,
SYSV has /etc/inittab. The printer configurations can be different,
command names, syntaxes, config file formats, etc. It is a real nuisance
to have to remember all of these, plus the different Berkely dirivatives
(Xinu BSD, Ultrix, SunOS), AT&T dirivatices (SunOS, IRIX),
etc. And these directory layouts are basically the same. If they weren't,
things would be even more heinous.
I'd like linux to be as close to what I know as possible. If not, that's
a strike against an otherwise excellent operating system.
>Some people see Linux as a free POSIX/SYS V kernel, and that's all. I
>think it is similar to MINIX in the way that you are free to experiment
>with new ideas. So, what would you think of a new structure? One thing
>I would like to find in it would be a relation between the filesystem
>and the runlevel, another would be a better way to install bigger
>software.
Yes, Linux is neat for playing with new ideas. The dependance of
the kernel on the 386 architecture allows a lot of coding shortcuts.
Shared libraries that are not dynamically linked give you reduced
memory usage, but without added overhead in exec()
for linker code. But these are implementation issues, and have
nothing to do with how the user sees the system.
>Any ideas? Would you appreciate a change or are you glad with the
>existing structure? What do you like in it, what don't you like?
>
>Michael
mount, fsck, umount, init, belong in /etc like all other sysadmin
things, as they are on "normal" Unix machines. Hard drives should be
labeled as /dev/hdXY where X is the drive number, 0 based,
and Y is the partition. Normally, partition c would be the whole
drive, partition g /usr, partition a root, etc. As far as the
interface, we should move to something POSIX, or Berkely, or SYSV,
but something standard.
Other than that, I'm happy with my setup because it looks like Unix,
runs programs like Unix, acts like Unix, goes easy on resources
(This is relative, of course), and is easy to hack.