[Mageia-dev] Please test: initscripts+systemd in updates_testing

Mon Oct 31 21:16:26 CET 2011

'Twas brillig, and Thomas Backlund at 31/10/11 19:01 did gyre and gimble:
+> Colin Guthrie skrev 31.10.2011 19:47:
+>>> Just have initramfs mount / and /usr, no need to merge.
+>>
+>> Yes, this is exactly what is intended, but it depends on the use case:
+>>
+> 
+> Then I have misread something somewhere along the way... :/
+
+Yeah the link Olav provided (
+http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
+) is certainly worth reading if you've not already done so. The "Going
+Forward" section in particular starts with this quote:
+
+"/usr on its own filesystem is useful in some custom setups. But instead
+of expecting the traditional Unix way to (sometimes mindlessly)
+distributing tools between /usr and /, and require more and more tools
+to move to /, we now just expect /usr to be pre-mounted from inside the
+initramfs, to be available before 'init' starts."
+
+>> For simple installs, such as on my laptop or typical "desktop" linux,
+>> then having separate / and /usr is something I've specifically avoided
+>> for just about ever (I sometimes have separate /boot for "complicated
+>> rootfs" reasons and I almost always have a separate /home, but other
+>> than that, I like to keep my desktops/laptops simple). In other words
+>> there just are not sufficient benefits in doing this.
+> 
+> Yes,
+> I agree for the desktop/laptop/pad/ use there is no need for splitting
+> besides /home and maybe separate /boot if you want to use encryption.
+
+Nod
+
+>> But on the server, especially on a farm of servers with a potentially
+>> shared /usr across several machines, then yes, keeping it as something
+>> that can be mounted by the initramfs is perfectly feasible. This is a
+>> specific use case that Lennart + Co are trying to design for.
+>>
+> 
+> Ok, this is exactly the part that have raised my concerns that it was
+> about to be "forgotten" in favour of "simplicity".
+> 
+> Server installs usually want to be more "free" to finetune.
+> 
+> Another use case is to be able to split up the system on more harddisks
+> to even the load on the disks.
+> 
+> And yet another is simply to get more space depending on hw.
+> (yes I know lvm exists but it's also an extra layer / point of failure
+>  that is not always worth it)
+
+Totally agree about LVM (and to a lesser degree the RAID layer)... I'm
+looking forward to btrfs which merges in the RAID layers and (I think -
+I've not fully read up on it) the LVM functionality too.
+
+Currently, I've found performance really takes a hit with my RAID+LVM
+setups... 40M/s write speeds where as just plain RAID was getting closer
+to 160M/s... this is likely in part due to 4k sector sizes too of
+course. But I digress!
+
+> But if this part is the "some specific usecases" then I guess I need to
+> start re-reading some stuff :)
+
+:)
+
+Col
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+