Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

[Christopher Browne]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 08:19:28AM -0500, James Knott wrote:
>> I found this recently on Groklaw:
>> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html
>
> Well it is quite wrong.
>
> Linux didn't start using initrd/initramfs until much later in life,
> and even then, they are optional, so they certainly do not mean that
> the seperation of what is needed to mount filesystems from the normal
> operation of the system is obsolete.
>
> So in all it is still a useful split.  Is /usr a good name for it?
> Probably not.  No idea what a good name would be.

The fact that initrd wasn't there in the beginning doesn't prevent it
from indicating something that's effectively true today.  Yes, initrd
is there to satisfy much the same things that /sbin used to be for.

To a considerable extent, the split of /bin vs /usr/bin vs /sbin vs
/usr/bin vs whatever else often doesn't matter anymore.

After all, if all you use $PATH for is to type in one of
(firefox|libreoffice|xterm), or hide such behind a menu system, the
notion of even having $PATH is somewhat obsolete.

(Of course, that may be contrasted with needing to add /usr/bin/mh to
your PATH ;-)!)

I wonder if we could use something cleverer, to include programs of
interest and exclude uninteresting ones; Hurd was going to try to go
somewhere like that, by having something a bit like a union mount so
that it anticipated you ought only need a /bin directory that would
combine all the programs that your user would have access to.
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question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
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