TUHS February 2012

tuhs@tuhs.org

23 participants
13 discussions

Re: [TUHS] Understanding the /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin Split

by Pepe

"Jose R. Valverde" <jrvalverde(a)cnb.csic.es> said: > Beyond that, the original articles and comments complained also about > directory naming (/bin /etc /lib) as "unintuitive". I fail to > understand in > what way is it easier for someone new to a computer to learn a "/bin > /etc /var /lib" alien terminology and what it means, than to learn > "System Config Libraries > etc..." or "Windows Windows32 Windows64 Temp Users and Settings, > etc..." In SCO Xenix/UNIX, the home directory is usually mounted on /u. I was amused the first time I saw it.

12 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] Understanding the /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin Split

by Norman Wilson

Lyndon Nerenberg: A well designed system without library bloat can pump out some pretty skinny static binaries. ======= V6, for example. Or even V7 if carefully pruned. Once upon a time, I made an RK05 disk (5MB) with a stripped-down post-V7 for an 11/45. It had just enough programs to allow basic file manipulation and text-processing. We used this compact system to allow our secretaries (in a small university department in the early 1980s) to continue typing up papers and letters on the day the machine-room air conditioning was being replaced. With the doors standing open and a big fan, we were willing to leave the 11/45 running, but not the VAX-11/780. Due to contractor screwups (when the chilled water was turned on, it rained up and down the hall--many poorly-soldered joints in the copper pipes), we actually needed this for a couple of days, so for safety I shut the system down every evening, removed the RK05 cartridge, and took it downstairs to the 11/34 that had a tape drive, where I booted RT11 and took an image backup with ROLLOUT. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

12 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] Understanding the /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin Split

by arnold＠skeeve.com

> http://www.osnews.com/story/25556/Understanding_the_bin_sbin_usr_bin_usr_sb… Cute, but most of the history is wrong. The distinction between /bin and /usr/bin is true - / held the things need to boot the system. Other things were on /usr. The Berkeley guys did NOT invent shared libraries. Shared libraries as we know them came originally from Sun, on SunOS 4.x for sure, possibly on SunOS 3.x. (Larry?) Many commercial vendors adopted the design (Ultrix, I think, and maybe others) and finally around 4.4 they found their way into "pure" BSD. /home and /opt came into the picture circa 1989 with SVR4 when Berkeley, AT&T and Sun (and maybe a few others?) got together to standardize the layout and make diskless booting possbile and reasonable with NFS sharing of home directories. /sbin & /usr/sbin came into the picture at this point also, to hold executables that until then had lived in /etc. The idea was that /etc should only have per-machine configuration files. The general point of the article and of some of the postings, that the proliferation doesn't make a lot of sense today, is well taken. The Bell Labs guys themselves recognized this when they did Plan 9. The problem is even worse on 64 bit Linux systems, which can handle two different architectures. /lib and /lib64 confuse a lot of the older 'configure' programs. Personally, I hate reading articles by "experts" where 85% of the facts are wrong. I lived through all of it, and I know better... :-) Arnold

12 years, 11 months

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TUHS February 2012