Re: Preparing new distribution...

[Dancer <dancer@brisnet.org.au>]

Well, the way it works (sorta) is that everything in /whatever (with the exception
of /usr) was stuff that you had to have while in single-user mode. You could put
that all on one filesystem and mount it.

Everything from /usr downwards was stuff that you only needed when you went
multi-user...which often resided on a filesystem that wasn't mounted until that
point.

Home directories tended to live either in /usr/home or were on filesystems of their
own.

/usr/etc contained all the tools that _would_ have been in /etc, but weren't needed
until the system went multi-user (pppd, for example).

Modern unix methodology puts single-user system binaries in /sbin (instead of /etc),
multi-user system binaries in /usr/sbin (instead of /usr/etc), any multi-user
binaries that weren't part of the distribution, or that have been modified or
customised, in /usr/local/sbin.

Likewise, regular single-user binaries (sh, ls, tar, etc) go in /bin, and regular
multi-user binaries (csh, head, tail) go in /usr/bin


The basic idea is simple. If it isn't in /etc/* or /usr/local/* or a user's home
directory, then it's part of the stock distribution and does not need to be backed
up. You can always reload the distribution to restore it.

If it's not in /usr/* then it's something the sysadmin might be using to set up,
modify or recover the system (as from a crash, or disaster..which is why tar lives
in /bin).

D


Kristoffer Lawson wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, Dancer wrote:
>
> > Correct. Nearly everything you now find in /sbin on a modern sysV machine used
> > to live in /etc on BSD4.2 (and before, as well as some considerable time
> > after). It was the standard place.
>
> It also seems like fairly common practise to put binaries in /usr/etc.
> Maybe also a SysV thing?
> Whether this is acceptable behaviour or not I'm not sure.
>
>          -     ---------- = = ---------//--+
>          |    /     Kristoffer Lawson      |    www.fishpool.com
>          +-> |    setok@fishpool.com       |  - - --+
>              |-- Fishpool Creations Ltd - /         |
>              +-------- = - - - = ---------      /~setok/



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