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Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/

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Hello,

On Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 05:06:33AM +0000, miphix wrote:
> If you were to issue 'ls -l /' You'll find that /bin, /sbin,
> lib{32,64,x32} are linked to their counterparts in /usr/. I under-
> stand the logic in doing so. However, for specific reasons that would
> require exhaustive explanations that I would prefer to save us all from
> me doing, I would like to break this behaviour by having /usr genuinely
> be whole heartedly installed on its own partition.

Why do you believe that putting /usr on its own partition will
break anything, much less anything to do with usrmerge?

Debian has always supported /usr on its own partition; the only
thing that changed in recent history is that such a mount will take
place in the initramfs. The use case that was rendered unsupported
at that time was separate usr *with no initramfs*¹.

As you can still symlink /bin to /usr/bin even when /usr is
mounted from somewhere else, usrmerge should still work too.

Perhaps you have some reason for not wanting a usrmerged system that
isn't what you explained. I'd be interested to know what it was if
so, but I don't think it is a good idea.

The reasons why I think that are:

1) a non-usrmerged layout is not supported. You are going to make
   life hard for yourself by encountering problems that Debian
   maintainers aren't obliged to care about.

2) Most other distros are already usrmerged long before Debian was.
   So every other piece of software "outside" Debian is expecting
   that layout too.

We can stroke our real or imaginary beards until the cows come home
about whether it is bad form to assume usrmerge or whatnot but is it
a hill you want to die on?

> I am comfertable with digging deep with the right background
> knowledge to navigate what's needed.

Thing is, at this point it's being different just for the sake of
it, as far as I can see.

Thanks,
Andy

¹ There was another use-case which is "sharing a read-only /usr
  between systems by NFS, etc." but at the time this was widely
  regarded a lost cause as so many other things violated the
  premise.

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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Thread

disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ miphix <miphix@insomnia247.nl> - 2024-01-10 06:20 +0100
  Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-10 06:50 +0100
    Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> - 2024-01-10 08:00 +0100
      Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Tim Woodall <debianuser@woodall.me.uk> - 2024-01-10 08:10 +0100
  Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Tim Woodall <debianuser@woodall.me.uk> - 2024-01-10 07:40 +0100
  Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2024-01-10 17:40 +0100
    Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Mike Castle <dalgoda+debian@gmail.com> - 2024-01-10 19:50 +0100
      Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-10 20:00 +0100
        Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Mike Castle <dalgoda+debian@gmail.com> - 2024-01-10 20:50 +0100
          Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ tomas@tuxteam.de - 2024-01-11 06:50 +0100
          Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2024-01-11 14:20 +0100
      /usr on NFS (was: Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/) Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2024-01-10 22:40 +0100
  Re: disable auto-linking of /bin -> /usr/bin/ Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-11 05:10 +0100

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