From owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Sat Nov 11 17:39:50 2017 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F2D31E6FF50 for ; Sat, 11 Nov 2017 17:39:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-lists@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (be-well.ilk.org [23.30.133.173]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CFD2567D95 for ; Sat, 11 Nov 2017 17:39:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-lists@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from lowell-desk.lan (router.lan [172.30.250.2]) by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A021B33C22; Sat, 11 Nov 2017 12:39:43 -0500 (EST) Received: by lowell-desk.lan (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 67A273981A; Sat, 11 Nov 2017 12:39:42 -0500 (EST) From: Lowell Gilbert To: lankfordandrew@charter.net Cc: "'freebsd-hackers\@freebsd.org'" Subject: Re: Root partition and usrland on one slice, /usr/local ports and src on another References: Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2017 12:39:42 -0500 In-Reply-To: (lankfordandrew@charter.net's message of "Sat, 11 Nov 2017 10:50:14 -0500") Message-ID: <44vaigu335.fsf@lowell-desk.lan> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2017 17:39:51 -0000 lankfordandrew@charter.net writes: > When I installed FreeBSD 10 on an old laptop, I wanted to merge both > the root partition heirarchy (kernel /bin /sbin etc) and the rest of > Fbsd usr-land together onto one slice. I like upgrading from source, > but I do that more frequently with ports than the OS-proper. When I > need to boot up single user, it seems rather quaint these days (at > least for a laptop user) to have to mount /usr in order to get > reasonably the functionality from applications that use shared > libraries (vi, man pages, etc). The likelyhood that I'm going to fall > back on a serial port and an ASR-33 tty are nil. > > So what I'd like to do is put the entire freebsd system on one fairly > small, pristine slice, but put the more bloated and ephemeral src, > ports, /usr/local, /home portions on one big slice. I tried symlinks > between "/src" or "/usr/src" and "/usr/ports" and tweaking some build > variables, but it seemed like something always breaks in some bizarre > way whenever I tried to rebuild world. I guess a lot of the strange > behavior showed up in /src/contrib and the gnu licensed side of the > build system. Can anyone suggest some docs on /src and ports, > specifically for what I'm trying to do besides "man src"? For your case, I'd recommend just putting everything into a single slice. The installer even does that these days, if I recall correctly. That said, what you're describing should work fine. Having /usr/src, /usr/obj, and /usr/ports all be symlinks works fine for me in a chroot I'm using (I don't do it with laptops any more because I use NFS instead).