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

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| 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.

That's what Plan 9 does and I assume that Hurd is copying it.

(Plan 9 used to be the future.)

==========

I've heard that OS/X does something like: all a package does is add a 
directory, and populates it with all the "stuff", including any
executables.  The package manager does not have to be intricate, policing 
shared directories.  Then the binary gets made accessible somehow.  
Symlink?  Union mount?

I would even give each package a unique UID and make sure that the package 
manager (almost) only did things that that user would be allowed to do.  
Of course this would make it harder for packages to share things.

In any Linux system with packages, the package manager is a big fat 
security hole.  This scheme would reduce the attack surface.
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