From: jmorriso@rflab.ee.ubc.ca (John Paul Morrison) Subject: Re: managing files Date: 10 Mar 1993 07:58:16 GMT
In article <C3I2G5.1yy@wyvern.wyvern.com> caywood@wyvern.wyvern.com (John Caywood) writes:
>Sang Kim (kims@panix.com) wrote:
>: I was wondering why there are two directories for bin
>: 1) /bin
>: 2) /usr/bin
>
>: are the commands in /bin supposed to be separated from commands in /usr/bin?
>: or can i just put all the commands in .bin.
>Historically, there was supposed to be enough utilities in the root
>partition to bring up your UN*X system on 1 piece of disk only. /usr
>was typically in another partition, or on another disk. So /bin contained
>a minimal set of stuff (mount, format, tar, restore, ls,...) to enable you
>to repair or restore your system after a disk crash. A lot of people
>build linux on a single partition, so it hardly matters. Also, the
>tradition got started before a clever person at Berkeley thought up symlinks,
>and you can only make a hard link (ln without the -s) to a file in the same
>file system.
and it would be NICE if we went back to the tradition. Keeping /bin, /usr/bin
and /usr/local/bin seperate, and /etc, /usr/etc seperate as well.
so that way you can keep all the crap in /usr/local/bin in a seperate
partition, so the root partition can be easily kept on a small partition,
so it can be reformatted when it gets trashed, or you need to do a clean
update of things, but without destroying /usr.
>
> "If you've always done it that way, it's probably wrong"
> --------------------------------------attributed to Edward Kettering
> John Caywood, aspiring Linux S.A., ! caywood@wyvern.twuug.com
> vi bigot, and wine drinker ! J.S.Caywood@LaRC.NASA.GOV
-- __________________________________________________________________________ John Paul Morrison | jmorriso@rflab.ee.ubc.ca VE7JPM | .sigfile without a cause !ubc-cs!rflab.ee.ubc.ca!jmorriso | ________________________________________|_________________________________