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Date:      Wed, 20 Jul 2016 23:59:36 -0700
From:      Mark Millard <markmi@dsl-only.net>
To:        Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        freebsd-arm <freebsd-arm@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD user home directory
Message-ID:  <9F4673FD-828B-4809-911B-00EDD601C425@dsl-only.net>
In-Reply-To: <20160721030322.GL65494@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <79BCA7CB-4D6A-45AF-8432-FD7F8577B42F@dsl-only.net> <20160721030322.GL65494@FreeBSD.org>

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On 2016-Jul-20, at 8:03 PM, Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 07:54:27PM -0700, Mark Millard wrote:
>> Looking at my armv6 and amd64 11.0's (long in use, originally
>> -CURRENT, now -STABLE, maintained via source updates):
>> 
>> amd64 and armv6 (rpi2) both have real /usr/home directories.
>> 
>> armv6 (and rpi2) has no /home path established at all, not even
>> as a symbolic link to elsewhere.
>> 
>> amd64 has /home -> usr/home via a symbolic link.
>> 
>> (I do not have access to check my memory and will not for weeks
>> but if I remember right my powerpc64 and powerpc 11.0's were like
>> amd64 above. They dated back to somewhat before 2016-June-04 when
>> last updated.)
>> 
>> If I remember right my old powerpc and powerpc 10.x-STABLE's and
>> 10.x-RELEASES also agreed with amd64 above. (At the time I only was
>> experimenting with powerpc64 and powerpc FreeBSD.)
>> 
>> In comparison today's -r303119 says:
>> 
>>> Log:
>>>  Create a /usr/home -> /home symlink for the arm images to
>>>  avoid /usr/home confusingly being created as a directory.
>> 
>> 
>> May be which path is to directly be the actual directory by default
>> has changed --since all of my contexts started long ago.
>> 
>> But what all my confirmable examples suggest is that /usr/home
>> is normally the directory.
>> 
>> I did not manually control or create /usr/home for any of the
>> contexts as far as I can remember. It was automatic as a side effect
>> of some activity.
>> 
> 
> Right, but as we do not provide binary upgrade paths for tier-2
> architectures, nothing should be affected for source-based upgrades.
> Especially in this case.
> 
>> If there is variability up to now or across architectures it might
>> be appropriate to have an UPDATING entry to indicate the new uniform
>> answer or whatever describes how things now are.
>> 
>> Are there alternative standard FreeBSD installation techniques
>> that may be should all be made to match for such properties? (POLA
>> for such defaults: lack of variability across [the major or official]
>> techniques?)
>> 
> 
> This is discussion that is not applicable for the commit to which you
> reference.  It creates a symlink on an image that is "installed" by
> writing a raw filesystem onto an SD card via dd(1).  This does not
> affect source-based upgrades.
> 
> Glen

Just an FYI:

I think I found were my amd64 /usr/home came from: I happened to have
experimented with zfs for that and /usr/libexec/bsdinstall/zfsboot uses
the following in defining ZFSBOOT_DATASETS

        # Home directories separated so they are common to all BEs
        /usr/home       # NB: /home is a symlink to /usr/home

(BE in "BEs" is "Boot Environment".) My only amd64 environment is the
only context that I've experimented with zfs in.

It is true that this is not likely to have much in common with how my
armv6, powerpc64, and powerpc environments got to be /usr/home style
(all tier 2).




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