*BSD News Article 51542


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From: wingel@hog.rydnet.lysator.liu.se (Christer Weinigel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: File hierarchy (was Re: Linux or FreeBSD)
Date: 24 Sep 1995 09:50:05 GMT
Organization: Rydnet, University of Linkoping, Sweden
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References: <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu> <43klfh$2sg@uriah.heep.sax.de> <43ltqq$3k1@agate.berkeley.edu> <43pvh8$c6j@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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[RANT MODE ON]
(Don't take this personally, this is more of a general comment, I just
got triggered by the commented post :-)

Isn't it amazing that most people who do FreeBSD/NetBSD/Linux-bashing
complain about things that have been obsolete for quite a long time?
`But foo was buggy in Linux 0.99pl13 and therefore Linux stinks!' or
`FreeBSD had a crufty bar in release 1.0, go stuff yourself! -- Linux Rulez'
If you (the plural you, as in anybody reading this I suppose) want to
stomp on something in Linux/*BSD/SCO/whatever, please take a look at
a recent distribution, it really isn't fair to compare Linux of today
with FreeBSD two years ago.
[RANT MODE OFF]

That's probably one of the reasons why I won't say all that much about
FreeBSD, the closest I've been to it so far was when I tried (and
failed) to install NetBSD on a MicroVAX II.  I do have a few things to
say about Linux though :-)

In article <43pvh8$c6j@uriah.heep.sax.de>,
J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote:
>Nick Kralevich <nickkral@parker.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>
>>Just so there's no misunderstanding:  The Linux File System Layout
>>Standard (ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/fsstnd/) doesn't allow 
>>binaries in /etc either.
>
>But it doesn't seem to be much widespread. :-(

Linux has gone through a lot of changes during the last years, and the
File System Standard (FSSTND) is one of them.  Astonishingly enough,
most Linux distributions have adopted it.  At least Slackware and
RedHat claim to adhere to it, and I suspect that the Bogus and
InfoMagic distributions do too.

In short, I believe that is not the case any more, FSSTND is rather
widespread nowdays.

>
>The last Linux distribution i've seen (some Slackware derivative) had
>tons of binaries under /etc,

A quick `file /etc/*' on my system reveals no binaries at all in my
/etc-directory, and only two symlinks for programs which look for
/etc/utmp and /etc/wtmp.  This is on a basic Slackware system,
although it's been fouled up beyond all recognition since I converted
my system to ELF.  The stuff in /etc is still fairly vanilla though.

>			      and the tool to remount the root file
>system read/write was well-hidden somewhere under /etc/remount/.  I
>wondered why they even used to have a different thing than mount(8)
>for it, in particular since the mount man page mentioned the "-u"
>flag, as well as the BUGS that "-u is currently unsupported". :)

Mercifully, the /etc/remount junk is long gone, nowdays, it's plain
old `mount' which does the job.

>(The man page was from BSD, btw. :-)

It is no longer, or more correctly, it's mutilated beyond recognition.
The -u flag is still there in the synopsis section though, but it's
not mentioned anywhere else (a-ha, a bug :-).

Cheers,
  Christer (thanks for bearing with me)