Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:13:28 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au> Subject: Re: /usr/home vs /home Message-ID: <20120218111328.69d5b10a.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <4F3F1817.7030009@herveybayaustralia.com.au> References: <4F3ECF23.5000706@fisglobal.com> <20120217234623.cf7e169c.freebsd@edvax.de> <3D08D03C85ACFBB1ABCDC5DA@mac-pro.magehandbook.com> <4F3F1817.7030009@herveybayaustralia.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:16:39 +1000, Da Rock wrote: > On 02/18/12 12:16, Daniel Staal wrote: > > --As of February 17, 2012 11:46:23 PM +0100, Polytropon is alleged to > > have said: > > > >> Well, to be honest, I never liked the "old style" default > >> with /home being part of /usr. As I mentioned before, _my_ > >> default style for separated partitions include: > >> > >> / > >> swap > >> /tmp > >> /var > >> /usr > >> /home > >> > >> In special cases, add /opt or /scratch as separate partitions > >> with intendedly limited sizes. > >> > >> You can see that all user data is kept independently from > >> the rest of the system. It can easily be switched over to > >> a separate "home disk" if needed. > > > > --As for the rest, it is mine. > > > > I'm in agreement with you on that I like to have /home be a separate > > partition, and not under /usr. (Of course, my current zfs system has > > 40 partitions...) Partly though I recognize that I like it because > > that's what I'm used to, and how I learned to set it up originally. > > (My first unix experience was with OpenBSD, over 10 years ago now.) > > > > I've never seen anything listing the main reasons for having /home > > under /usr though. I figure there must be a decent reason why. Would > > anyone care to enlighten me? What are the perceived advantages? > > (Particularly if you then make a symlink to /home.) > I always thought /usr was like user partition :) There are two major definitions: /usr = Unix system resources /usr = user and system binaries FreeBSD's explaination can be obtained from "man hier", where "contains the majority of user utilities and applications" is provided. Some UNIX systems, in particular IRIX, if I remember correctly, also placed the home subtree into the /usr partition, even though they called it /usr/people... FreeBSD's reason for making /home@ -> /usr/home is a traditional thing too, I think. As you said, balancing or estimating disk sizes can be tricky, so /home and /usr made a deal to reduce the guessing from 2 to 1. :-) Historical background needed. > But seriously, for the pedantic yes, but for a desktop user (at least) > having home on /usr partition makes sense - balances space and > functionality; plus a lack of nodes on the disk for partitions? Limit > was 8 I think. I think "h" is the last letter, with "b" reserved for swap and "c" reserved for "the whole partition" (the traditional partitioning scheme ad0[a-h], I'm not looking at GPT ad0p[0-9*] right now). > But now with /usr/home if you want to install from ports > it can take a few gig, but that can be wasted because you're not always > installing from ports, so might as well share space with the home > directories and balance that way. You could, on the other hand, move ports stuff into /home if there's more space available. You need more space for building (downloading sources, extraction, compiling etc.) than for the result that's going to be installed into /usr/local. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20120218111328.69d5b10a.freebsd>