this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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Split-/usr on Linux became so broken, that even Gentoo maintainers decided they can't fix it (gitweb.gentoo.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by uis@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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https://gitweb.gentoo.org/data/gentoo-news.git/tree/2013/2013-09-27-initramfs-required/2013-09-27-initramfs-required.en.txt?id=a79dd69b0cca439bc0c483c9193c79e0554819d0

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[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 year ago

The Gentoo news post is not about having /bin and /usr/bin as separate directories, which continues to work well to this day (I should know, since that's the setup I have). That configuration is still supported.

The cited post is about having /bin and /usr on separate partitions without using an iniramfs, which is no longer guaranteed to work and had already been awfully iffy for a while before January. Basically, Gentoo is no longer jumping through hoops to make sure that certain files land outside /usr, because it was an awful lot of work to support a very rare configuration.

[–] Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t know if this is really a “so broken” instance. /bin and /usr/bin (or sbin) have never been well separated, to the point where many distributions just symlink to /usr anyway. If you don’t want an initramfs to provide binaries you need them somewhere accessible.

[–] uis@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

/bin and /usr/bin (or sbin) have never been well separated, to the point where many distributions just symlink to /usr anyway.

They were(see FHS) and you show exactly how broken it became.

/usr supposed to have files that are needed only after first part of boot procees before mounting filesystems.

[–] Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 year ago

They were defined sure, but without distribution adherence they weren’t actually, this has been the case for a long time. Out of all the distributions, Gentoo is probably one of the most sensitive to this issue since most others have used initramfs or initrd for decades and Gentoo has always made it optional.

If the post was about FHS adherence I’d agree more.

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that was a workaround, not needed anymore, so let them die

[–] uis@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And use bigger bandaid. Meanwhile initramfs and split-usr would greatly complement each other.

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

of course not, any program that has it own install script install it on /bin because it's easier, and why need that in a early boot, what's the difference, was always a workaround, wasn't needed to complement anything before, and don't need anything now

[–] Samueru@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alpine still keeps /bin and /usr/bin separated.

And iirc the next fedora release will finally unify everything under /usr/bin.

[–] brandon@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And iirc the next fedora release will finally unify everything under /usr/bin.

On my current Fedora 40 install /bin is already a symlink to /usr/bin